Ashes to Ashes Truth and Reality
by Blue-Jackal
Summary: Following her eventual exit from 1981 this fic covers Alex's attempts to recover both mentally and physically from her ordeal, whilst also trying to make sense of wether 1981 was in any way real or not. But is 2008 really any safer than 1981?
1. Chapter 1

"So we've got three armed bastards against one", the tall DCI summed up as he looked on at the situation before him, "not bad odds at all".  
The team - Gene, Alex, Chris and Ray had just arrived in the Quattro after answering a call from Viv at the station.  
A suspect in a spate of armed robberies had been persued to a derelict house in an area awaiting demolition. Plods had sealed off the area and called for back up.  
Just moments earlier the red Quattro of DCI Gene Hunt had roared into the street and ripped through the police cordon tape as if it were nothing but thin air.  
Then, as was it's trademark, it had swung its rear end round and skidded to a halt, smoke spewing from the tyres.  
"Actually there's four of us", D.I Drake interupted Hunt's train of thought.  
Leaning against the Quattro, Gene blinked from the house, to his D.I and then back at the house again.  
"Sorry", he said with a sharp wit to his voice, "I obviously meant to say - three armed bastards and one posh bird. There, four, happy now Drake?". .  
Alex rolled her eyes and shook her head slightly as she shut the passenger side door with a little more force than was actually required.  
"Do we know where in the building this bastard is Guv?", piped up DS Ray Carling.  
"Plods say the building's boarded up at the back", said a 'trying to sound usefull' DC Chris Skelton as he chewed on some gum, "So he's deffo still in there".  
"Okay gentlemen", Gene blew a frustrated sigh, "Lets get this dick 'eads attention and get him outta there be it on foot or in a box"  
"Right Guv", agreed Ray reaching for his gun.  
Gene too reached into his large black overcoat and produced his emaculately kept gun.  
The sound of three lethal weapons being armed became apparent and Gene stepped forward, towards the building, followed by Chris and Ray.  
"Now hold on, just wait a minute", Alex stepped infront of the three of them, her bright blue top blowing slightly in the light sunny breeze despite her white jacket.  
"There are other ways", Alex said, holding her hands up as if ordering her colleagues to halt in thier tracks, "Have you never heard of negotiation? No, of course you haven't, you just send in Task Force Hunt".  
Gene lowered his gun in frustration with his D.I.  
"Oh for gods bloody sake Bolly!", he began, "That's a blagger in there you know, not the bleedin' Pope! He's not going to come out with his hands up if you offer him a cuppa and a flash of yer tits!".  
"Maybe for a flash of her tits he will", Ray thought out loud.  
A few moments of silence followed as both Gene and Alex stared at Ray.  
"What?" he said and raised his shoulders in a big shrug, "I was just thinking out loud".  
"Anyway", Alex continued, "has there been any attempt to establish contact with the suspect?".  
Everyone looked at Gene.  
Gene, in turn, eyed the surroundings.  
Plod had the area taped off and were stood as if keeping a perimiter guard. Some were shoo-ing back curious members of the passing public, asking them to "Move along now".  
"No I very much doubt the Plods have discussed the finer points of Shakes-bloody-spear with 'im", Gene said pointing to his uniformed colleagues with thier black domed helmets.  
"Right", Alex nodded, ignoring the usual sarcasm that was now a part of daily life.  
She turned towards the building.  
The windows on the lower level were boarded up. The door had been too until the suspect had kicked it in.  
The upstairs windows were not boarded up but had been smashed to bits, most likely by local stone throwing thugs in the months the house had been derelict.  
Graffiti was also present with several 'tags' sprayed on the walls.  
And rubbish. Rubbish was strewn everywhere. Old car tyres around the wall of the house, crushed beer cans, broken glass etc.  
It was clearly a rough area which had seen better days.  
"Lets, much as it may pain you Guv", Alex began in a confident tone of voice, "try a more mature and modern approach".  
"Is she calling us immature?", Ray complained.  
"Dunno", Chris shrugged.  
"Look I'm not calling anyone anything", Alex attempted to reasure them. This was getting silly.  
"I just think it's pointless rushing in like this is a game of Cowboys and Indians".  
"Indians? He's not a Paki is he?", Ray asked, "I thought Viv said the suspect was a white male?".  
"I mean...", Alex gave up and threw her hands up in the air in defeat, "...forget it Ray, it was a figure of speech".  
Ray and Chris simply looked to each other and shrugged once again.  
"Was there actually a point to any of this Bolly or do you just get a kick out of confusing these two lemons?", Gene asked, his gloved trigger finger tapping the gun impatiently.  
"I'm going to try and talk him out", Alex stated.  
"No you are bloody not" Gene refused, squaring up alongside Alex as if to block her path towards the house.  
However, it hadn't been a request. It had been a statement of fact. A statement of Alex fact.  
"I am going to establish communication, find a way to gain his trust, and offer him a way out alive", Alex stated in full confidence of her abilities. After all, she had done this so many times in the future that it was second nature to her.  
"Oh I'll order the red carpet and the limousine now then shall I?", Gene retorted, "Or should I just hand him my car keys and say 'on yer way now son'?"  
"Don't be so childish", Alex cursed. She was going to prove her point to him on this matter.  
She would prove that there was no need for bloodshed. If it took ten minutes or ten hours, D.I Alex Drake would have this guy out of that house alive.  
Sorting out his offences and charging him could then be dealt with later at the station...again, alive.  
"Okay boys...", Alex announced, "...bribery!".  
"What?", Gene asked, now totally lost by her. Chris and Ray were in just the same state.  
"If I do this and succesfully extract the suspect from the house", Alex began with a charm offensive clearly resonating in her voice, "then all the drinks tonight are on me!".  
"Roger that D.I Drake!", Chris smiled a big huge grin as he thoughtlessley scratched an itch on his face with the barrel of his gun, looking like he was about to shoot himself.  
"Mine's doubles", Ray said nodding with enthusiasm, "all night!".  
Alex smiled and nodded, satisfied.  
"Suddenly I feel your faith in my abilities has gone somewhat skyward gentlemen", she stated, allowing herself a somewhat cocky smirk.  
Gene held Alex's gaze, niether of them willing to break the stare. It was as if a visual tug of war was taking place.  
"You really think you can do this?", Gene said and paused as his lips formed his characteristic 'thinking' pout, "talk that twat into coming out and getting himself nicked?".  
"Absolutely", was Alex's simple response.  
Gene took another long pause and looked at the house again. He needed that bastard and alive would look so much better now the thoughts of superiors actually counted for something, and especially so soon after Scarman's less than ideal visit to the station.  
"I must be bloody barking", Gene began, "But go on, show us what this pschology stuff of yours can do. Go and hypnotize him or summin'".  
Alex nodded in thanks.  
"How long have I got?", she asked, turning her attention towards the building.  
"Until I change my mind", Gene said, his tone flat.  
"Alright", Alex agreed. Fair enough, after all, this approach was new to Gene, he couldn't be expected to understand it until he had seen it in action.  
"Oh and Bolly...", Gene called as Alex began to walk towards the graffiti covered house.  
She turned.  
Gene was stood tall, his gloved hands now pointing his gun towards the house, ready to fire.  
"...I've got you covered", he called in a commanding yet reasuring tone, "Gene Genie'll be watching your arse like a hawk!"  
Alex couldn't help but grin at his comment.  
"I bet he will", she muttered and turned away to walk towards her target.

Alex walked slowly yet confidently towards the house.  
A cat stopped to look at her but then scarpered over a fence.  
She thought this through some more.  
She didn't know the layout of this house but the suspect was almost ceratinly upstairs.  
As the lower windows were boarded up, the upstairs would allow him to monitor what was going on outside, and that would be important to him.  
She refused to look back at her colleagues. If the suspect was watching, he needed to know that he was dealing with her and her alone, that she wasn't some lackey.  
His world would now consist only of himself and her. The only way out now was through her.  
"Hello!", Alex called as she stopped a few metres from the house.  
She stood in the middle of the cordoned off road and waited.  
No reply.  
Perfectly normal, they never replied first go.  
"I'll assume you're listening then", Alex continued, "My name is D.I Alex Drake and I'm unarmed".  
Still nothing, again, perfectly normal.  
"And wether you want to believe it or not, I am your only way safely out of here".  
Again she waited. She never ever expected an instant response in any of the similar situations she'd been called to.  
They just listen at first. Take in what you say and then eventually, they just have to say something back, they just can't help it.  
"I know you're wanted for several robberies", Alex began, "but it would look better in court if you didn't turn this into a siege".  
He should be mulling that one over now, thinking of the consequences.  
How much longer would the sentence be if he turned this into a shoot out?  
"And if you come out now", Alex explained, "We can look into dropping the charge of resisting arrest".  
That's it, she thought. Throw him a line and reel him in.  
She'd resolved several situations like this over the years. Thrown them the line of salvation and they had emerged saying how events had simply gotten out of thier control and overcome them.  
"If you don't come out", Alex turned to serious tone, "you may force thier hand".  
Again she waited, allowing him to process the pros and cons of the words she spoke.  
She had to turn her words into metaphorical breadcrumbs to lure him out with, when the truth was that these officers were itching for a fatality outco...Alex stopped herself mid thought, remembering what happened the last time she used those exact words on a criminal.  
'Famous last words', she thought.  
Right, he'd had enough time to process that.  
Time to be his friend again.  
"Is there anything you require in there?", she called, aiming her question at any of the upstairs windows, "Are you hurt? Is there any medication you need to have on you?".  
Good, she thought, make him feel cared about. Make him feel there is someone to trust.

"Bloody 'ell", Gene said synically as he listened in, "She'll propose to 'im next!"  
Gene, Chris and Ray remained where Alex had left them next to the Quattro.  
Chris and Ray held thier guns towards the house, looking for movement.  
Gene however was like a lion ready to pounce.  
He still held his gun firm, his eyes scanning the windows for the slightest hint of movement, a shadow, anything.  
Ocassionally his eyes fell to Alex in an attempt to convince himself that she could deal with this and that she was okay, not in over her head.  
"Just bloody get 'im out of there", Gene urged almost silently under his breath.  
"Guv...", Ray called, holding a radio towards Gene.  
His focus had been so engrossed on Alex and her crackpot plan that he hadn't even heard the call on the radio.  
Gene took the radio, moving his gun away from guarding Alex momentarily.  
"Go ahead Viv", Gene spoke into it.  
"Guv, we've got a positive I.D on the suspect", Viv crackled over the airwaves, "He's a Lee Philips, aged 34, he's got convictions for robbery, assault and motor vehicle theft".  
Gene tutted, "Oh a right ray of sunshine then by all accounts".  
"Guv...", Viv butted in, clearly having more to say, "Go carefull, last year Philips was aquitted of shooting a Police officer in Birmingham and made a failed suicide attempt a few weeks later!".  
Gene's eyes widened in horror and he tossed the radio back through the Quattro's open window.  
"Drake!!", he bellowed, "Drake, get back here fast!"

Alex cursed under her breath.  
She knew he'd do something to ruin it, he just couldn't help himself.  
Alex turned back to Gene, ready to launch a verbal tirade in his direction when she realised how urgently he was now rushing towards her and gesturing for her to return to the safe distance of the Quattro.  
With sudden alarm Alex looked back briefly at the house and saw the danger.  
A shaven headed 'yob' appeared at the window with great speed.  
With a crazed look and an unintelligable scream he leant out of the window brandishing a hand gun.  
And that was when the shot rang out, followed closely by a second from another direction.  
Alex niether heard nor felt the shot in the conventional sense.  
There was a sensation in her head, above her left eye.  
It made everything go odd and she felt the ground hit her.  
Everything was blurring and she couldn't think coherantly.  
The shuffling of footsteps was something she could vaguely make out, as well as the sensation of hands on her. Rolling her onto her back, lifting her up?  
A voice.  
Her hearing had audibly blurred too.  
The shuffling stopped and she felt ground again. Like she had been lifted and carried to safety.  
The blurred voices became slightly clearer.  
Gene?  
It was Gene!  
"Just a scratch Bolls", Gene's voice huffed with a frantic air to it that she had never before heard, "Where's that damn ambulance!?"  
Touch was something she could feel. Was someone holding her?  
She squinted to see.  
Gene again. Cradling her in his arms, his fingers touching her face, gently smoothing her cheek.  
Alex tried to touch him but her body wouldn't respond with any movement.  
"Ray got him Bolls", Gene said proudly.  
Another sensation...was he squeezing her hand now?  
Yes he was, he must be. And he was squeezing it tightly.  
"Don't you close your eyes on me Bolly!", Gene urged as desperation encroached on his voice, "Unbreakable Bolly, remember? Un-bloody-breakable!".  
Her vision fading, Alex's thought process was shutting down.  
Images were now going black around the edges and slowly dimming, as if someone were slowly lowering the lights.  
"Alex...", she heard Gene faulter using her real name.  
"Alex?..."  
The very vague initial sensation of hands pressing down repeatedly on her chest were noticable but within moments began to fade too...  
An extremely faint image came to Alex's fading mind...  
"Molly...", the thought itself slurring...

Light.  
Very blurred light.  
Sensations again.  
Very vague sensations.  
And voices.  
Confusion.  
Something about a response?  
Another sensation. Something on her face.  
A moment of low quality clarity and the vision cleared ever so slightly.  
The thought process, off kilter, took in a few moments visuals.  
An oxygen mask on her face.  
And blurred forms around her.  
Initial low hums cleared slightly. Just enough to become voices.  
"Serious gunshot wound to the head!"  
"Occured within the last ninety minutes!"  
"Passer by walking a dog found her!"  
Almost certainly voices beloning to more than one person.  
"A Detective Inspector Alexandra Drake"  
"Met are contacting next of kin"  
"Had to be resuscitated twice on the way in!"  
"Okay, prep for immediate surgery, we'll do what we can!"  
"I've not lost a patient since the start of 2008 and I don't intend to start now!"  
The darkness edged in again.  
2008...  
It felt as if the very number, "2008", was allowing her to relax suddenly.  
"Pulse dropping"  
The voices blurred again.  
"Get some adrenalin!!"  
The darkness engulfed her now, but a thought prevented the last speck of light from vanishing...  
Molls...

End of Chapter 1


	2. Chapter 2

Forty eight pages he had amassed.  
Forty eight pages spelling out a possible case for legal action.  
He crossed a couple of words through and jotted some brief notes at the side of his printed up material.  
After a re-read, he was satisfied for the moment.  
Shuffling the documents neatly together he placed them back in his brief case which sat next to his chair.  
Evan rubbed his eyes.  
He was sat in a small but spacious room.  
He had been here day after day for hours on end, watching over Alex.  
Evan stood up slowly and stretched.  
He had been here since 10am this morning and it was now coming up to half past two in the afternoon.  
He sat back down again, his muscles a little looser now.  
Music was playing on the small battery powered radio. Some local station was playing popular music.  
The Doctors had said it might help stimulate Alex's brain and give her mind some information to process.  
Evan wasn't sure, but he had to be hopeful. It was all he could be.  
It had been eight weeks now since Alex had been shot.  
That day had been such a blur.  
The first inkling of something being wrong was when someone called his mobile number and said something about "Tim and Caroline Price's daughter".  
That could only mean Alex, but the line had been terrible and the mobile signal broke up before going dead.  
Whoever was on the other end must have thought he'd hung up on them.  
Evan had made a mental note to mention it to Alex later that day in case she knew anything about it.  
With that filed away in his mind, he had continued on with Molly.  
He had taken her home after the "seriously chocolatey cake" he had promised.  
He knew she was meant to be going to school but it was her birthday and, admittedly, she had been through quite a lot that morning.  
Best to just write school off...and deal with the flack he would get from Alex later.  
Such a smart kid for her age. Molly's main topic of the afternoon had been wanting umpteen demonstrations of how every single aspect of her new Blackberry worked.  
She had picked it up pretty quickly too.  
Immediately Molly had begun to test it out, messaging her mother amongst other people.  
When no reply returned from Alex, Evan inspected the Blackberry in case he had picked a faulty one, you never could tell with these things.  
A test text to his own phone came through with no problems.  
"Maybe she's busy Molly", Evan had concluded, "or driving, she can't read it whilst driving can she? She'd have to pull herself over and put points on her own license".  
And with that, they gave it no more thought.  
Until a knock at the door came.  
Molly was too engrossed in the space age phone to look up.  
"I'll get it then", Evan concluded and got up from the sofa.  
He cast aside his Daily Telegraph as BBC News 24, on the television in the background, broke a newsflash reporting the shooting of a Metropolitan Police Officer in London.  
He was met at the front door of Alex's house by two uniformed Police officers, one male, one female.  
"Mister White?" the female officer asked.  
"Yes", Evan nodded a little confused, "Are you looking for Alex? She's at the office or on her way there".  
"Mister White, could we come in please", the male officer said in a quiet voice, "We have some news regarding Detective Inspector Drake".  
"News? What sort of news?" Evan quizzed.  
"Best we come in sir", the female officer said in a hushed voice.  
Once in, Evan had learned the terrible truth and had sat with his hands clasped over his mouth.  
Molly had been sent to the kitchen to make some tea while the Police explained.  
Alex had been abducted and found shot in the head on an old disused barge alongside the Thames.  
Only by chance did a passing dog walker find her. The dog must have picked up on the scent of blood and followed it to the source.  
Alex had been rushed to hospital but it wasn't looking good and the odds were stacked against her even making it to the evening.  
And yet here she was, eight weeks later.  
Alex had made it through the emergency surgery despite having technically died twice while in theatre.  
But she had made it, or made it this far at least.  
Alex had been unconscious ever since she was brought in but the Doctors did say she occasionally showed some very small signs of responsiveness and there was definite brain activity.  
They had explained that if...when...she did wake up, it would be when her body was ready, and not a single moment before.  
Evan cleared his thoughts and looked up.  
As usual Alex lay unmoving in the hospital bed before him as the beeps on a heart monitor constantly assured him that she was alive.  
Her complexion was very pale, like someone who'd had all the life drained out of them.  
Evan had come to feel slightly uneasy seeing Alex like this, as if he were doing her an indignity and he shouldn't be looking at her in this state.  
But he felt someone had to be there for her.  
There was no one else after all.  
Sure enough, Molly came in and sat with her on a daily basis, but the child was at school a lot of the time.  
She had been allowed some time off school after the shooting, but Evan had decided it was for the best to give her something to focus on and she had gone back in the last few weeks with Evan's promise of calling if there were any news.  
As he did daily, Evan took hold of Alex's hand. It was warm, that was good.  
He had no idea if she could feel it but, again, it was something he had been encouraged to do.  
With his other hand he picked up a large card off the table beside the bed.  
It was a get well card from Alex's colleagues in the Met, filled with messages from the sincere to the silly.  
"Our thoughts are with you"  
"Hope you're back on your feet soon!"  
"We'll get him for ya!"  
"Get well luv!"  
"In our prayers"  
"Lazy cow, get out of bed and come back to work".  
Evan smiled slightly at the card and placed it back on the table.  
He tried to shake the thought but it had been in his mind for some time.  
Would Alex even be going back to work?  
He squeezed her hand as he looked at her.  
He could see the bullet's point of entry and it was, if he was honest to himself, a lot less dramatic looking than he would have expected.  
A slight scarring above Alex's left eye and a very slight round indentation where it had pierced the skull.  
Lucky, he thought as he considered that some gunshot victims had their entire faces blown to bits.  
One of the unfortunate parts of his chosen career was dealing with cases such as this in court, in both in defence and prosecution.  
One thing that bothered him was the object still inside her head.  
The surgery to save Alex's life had been successful but the surgeons had been unable to remove the bullet.  
It was still in there, just feet from him, right now.  
After Alex had stopped breathing for the second time in theatre the decision had been made that any attempt at removing the bullet would almost certainly prove fatal.  
Leaving it had been the safest, and only, course of action.  
Evan reluctantly accepted that this had been the only choice.  
He thanked whatever being there might be that the bullet had at least stopped there.  
The Surgeon had left Evan in no doubt that had the bullet gone right through and exited at the back of the head then Alex would be dead.  
He just hated this waiting game.  
He wanted Alex to wake, right now.  
He didn't care about getting back to work.  
He was his own boss and had handed his cases over to other members of his legal team who were all perfectly competent.  
But the waiting was getting to him.  
Evan constantly played the 'what if's' over in his mind.  
What state would Alex be in when she woke?  
Would there be any lasting effects?  
If so, how would she cope? Alex was one of the most fiercely independent people Evan knew.  
What impact might any disability have on Molly, and Alex's ability to raise Molly?  
And that was why he had amassed forty eight pages.  
Forty eight pages of documents outlining a case for suing the Metropolitan Police for failing in their duty of care to an employee.  
No way, in this day and age, should someone be able to grab a Police D.I off the street and put a bullet in her head.  
Before that even, Molly should never have been able to wander in to the hostage negotiation Alex had been dealing with by the Tate Modern.  
Why had no officer stood guard by Alex's car to ensure the safety of her daughter? She hadn't even been on duty at that moment!  
He had 48 pages of compelling evidence against the Met and, with Alex's blessing, he would use it.  
He would use it because, God forbid, if there were any lasting physical or mental effects to deal with then Alex would need money...and money didn't come easy.  
Evan looked at his watch. Nearly three o'clock.  
He had to go.  
School would finish at 3:30 and he needed to be on his way to pick up Molly, take her home to change and then bring her in to see Alex.  
How that kid was coping he never knew.  
Evan stood, still holding Alex's hand as he got to his feet.  
"I've got to go now, pick up Molly from school", he said, "I'll be back with her later and she can tell you all about her day".  
Gently, he placed Alex's hand back down beside her and reassuringly gripped her shoulder for a few seconds.  
"I'll see you later Alex, just keep up the good fight!"  
And with that, Evan picked up his briefcase and slowly left the room, shutting the door quietly behind him.

The only sounds left in the room now were the heart monitor and the music playing quietly on the radio.  
Nothing else moved or made a sound.  
Until, that is, something did move.  
Very slightly and very slowly, Alex's fingers moved, as if making a very slow grasping action.  
The beeps on the heart monitor also altered, as if reacting to a very slight change.  
This continued until, very slowly, Alex's eyes managed to open ever so slightly.  
There was almost certainly no conscious thought behind this.  
It simply meant that the body had obviously reached a stage where it felt it could move onto the next phase of recovery.  
Although Alex wasn't conscious as such, Alex Drake was very much in the early stages of waking up.

End of Chapter 2


	3. Chapter 3

Alex woke with a sudden start.  
She blinked a few times and rubbed her sleepy eyes.  
Whatever was the time?  
The clock on the wall showed 11:30am as if to answer her question.  
Alex sighed and relaxed her muscles a little. She hated waking up suddenly.  
Alex lay on her side on her living room sofa, a couple of cushions under her head for comfort.  
She hadn't meant to fall asleep but it was something she had been doing a lot since she came out of hospital, and for once she had the house to herself.  
Molly was at school and Evan, who had dropped in early as usual, had been forced by Alex to go to his office and catch up on his work.  
Rest, rest and more rest were just a few of the instructions she had been given by her Doctors.  
She hadn't had much choice in the matter as both Molly and Evan made absolutely sure that all the Doctor's instructions were followed to the letter.  
And the medication.  
Enough pills to make Alex think she should rattle as she walked.  
She knew she should be thankful.  
She knew she should think herself damn lucky to be alive.  
But she felt distinctly uncomfortable. Uncomfortable with herself more than anything else.  
Alex, above all others, knew that people often suffered from post traumatic stress.  
She knew and understood that an incident such as this wasn't something you brushed off and got over just like that.  
She knew the workings of the Human mind. It was something she was a professional in dealing with.  
So why was it so hard to sort out your own trauma?  
More than anything, Alex felt useless.  
Not content with shooting her in the head and nearly killing her, the world had obviously decided that oh no, this wasn't quite enough and had decided to kick her one last time while she was still down.  
Three days after waking up, Alex had suffered a seizure.  
Two days later, another.  
The Doctors ran brain scans and analysed the findings of their technological wonders.  
Once sure, they had broken the news to her.  
The injury to her brain had left Alex epileptic.  
'Gutted' was a good description of how she had felt.  
She thought she had done so well in her recovery until then.  
Alex was indeed suffering some after effects from the injury, but they had been things she could reluctantly deal with.  
She was prone to terrible headaches, dizzy spells and blurred vision now and then but there was a rather obvious reason for that one...a nice shiny metal bullet lodged in her brain.  
Mercifully the headaches weren't constant and she had been given prescription drugs, yet more drugs, to combat them.  
When the headaches hit, Alex would usually go upstairs, lay down, shut her eyes and be alone while she waited for the medication to kick in.  
Other than that, there wasn't much else that could be done for the headaches.  
The other effect was what Alex could only describe as a communication breakdown between her brain and the rest of her body.  
Some of the time she was fine, she could get up and do things just as she always had been able to.  
Yet other times she would go to pick something up and her hand, for instance, might not respond.  
Sometimes she could easily pop into the kitchen and make a cuppa, other times she would reluctantly have to ask Molly to help otherwise she would end up scalding herself by dropping the kettle.  
The Doctors had done their best to explain it to her in comprehensible terms.  
They had said to imagine that her brain was a computer and that, due to the gunshot, some of its software had become corrupted.  
Sometimes it worked fine, other times it lagged a little, or missed the occasional instruction completely.  
Unfortunately, the brain wasn't as easily fixed as a computer.  
When Alex had asked if there was any chance of improvement the Doctors had been completely honest and admitted that they didn't know.  
The brain might slowly repair itself and the tissue in the surrounding area, or it may even find ways of bypassing the damaged areas to compensate.  
Or, as was more likely, the damage had been done and Alex would have to learn to live with this 'corrupted software' in her head for the rest of her life.  
As she lay on the sofa she mentally chastised herself for feeling like this.  
She should be pleased not to have come away with anything worse.  
She could have been stuck in a wheelchair, or even brain dead.  
But the psychologist in her was fascinated by one aspect of her injury.  
The epilepsy.  
Not a great thing to have she admitted, but one thing constantly stuck in her mind about it.  
"Chas Cale", she muttered to herself in a quiet and contemplative tone.  
"Did my unconscious mind conjure up Chas Cale and his epilepsy, because it knew my injured brain was developing the condition?"  
She pondered deeply. The brain and the subconscious were complicated things and no one yet knew everything they were capable of.  
Despite much thought, Alex had no rational explanation for her 1981 experience.  
Initially she had believed that she was dreaming due to having spent so much time reading transcripts of the tapes made by Greater Manchester Police's late D.C.I Sam Tyler.  
But there was just so much more to 1981, this 1981 at least.  
A dream, even a very clear one, was inevitably just a dream.  
A dream, was nothing like her 1981.  
But this had everything. The touches, the details, the sounds, things far too vivid for just a dream.  
Never in a dream could she account for every item of paperwork on a dreamed up desk.  
Never in a dream did a hangover feel so soul crushingly awful.  
Never in a dream did sex feel so real.  
Sadly, nowhere in a dream did the heat of an exploding Ford Escort feel so real, so scorching.  
And nowhere in a dream had she ever felt so physically attracted to a man as she did D.C.I Gene Hunt.  
Everything, everything, had felt so real.  
Alex had only been home a fortnight, and only woken up three weeks before that.  
Yet she had spent a great deal of time thinking about where she had been, and she didn't mean the hospital.  
What was 1981?  
She began to understand Sam's very real confusion now.  
"Am I mad? In a coma? Or back in time?" Alex quietly repeated Sam's question, understanding it a lot better now.  
She had to admit that, before her own experience, she had suspected that Tyler had been suffering from an undiagnosed mental disorder which had only been worsened by his accident and resultant coma.  
But now?  
Alex had studied Tyler's case both before and after her own shooting.  
She had been a perfectly sane and stable person before the shooting, yet she had the same experience all be it in a different year. Clearly she wasn't mad!  
So maybe Tyler wasn't mad?  
Not mad, even though he threw himself off a building?  
As she now realised with hindsight, Tyler had made that fatal great leap just to get back to 1973!  
Alex was utterly confused, as she was about many things at the moment.  
Despite being told to rest, Alex had many things on her mind.  
One of the most distressing things was the fact that she would almost certainly not be able to return to work...After all, she couldn't even make something as simple a cup of tea some days.  
To return to the Met she would have to pass a medical, and there was no chance at all of that happening.  
She knew for a fact that her cases had all been assigned to other officers.  
But this had gutted Alex to the core. She loved her job, it was both exciting and rewarding.  
Yes there was the unpleasant side of things and she had, over the years, investigated some very nasty crimes.  
But more often than not she was successful and her profiling had been responsible for many murderers, rapists and paedophiles being locked up for a long, long time.  
Alex sat up, placed an elbow on her knee and held her head in her hand.  
"What do I do now?", she sighed deeply, "I have a daughter to support".  
She knew Evan wanted her to sue the Met but Alex had refused.  
Evan couldn't possibly understand her reasons but, the way she saw it, every Copper knew the risks and took their chances.  
This was the nature of the world they lived in.  
The Met were putting together a compensation package for her, but it would be better described as a pay off.  
Although Evan had disagreed with Alex, he had abided by her decision but promised to make the case himself if she ever reconsidered.  
And knowing Evan he would be back soon during his lunch to check on her.  
He usually stayed with Alex during the day but she had to admit, she was beginning to feel like someone who had been wrapped up in cotton wool.  
Evan had been worried about leaving Alex on her own incase she had another seizure, but she had assured him that her medication appeared to be working and the fits were being well suppressed.  
In fact, she hadn't had one since she had been put on the medication.  
'More medication', Alex thought.  
Medication for the epilepsy.  
Medication for preventing infection.  
She had to stop this. Her mind was all over the place, dwelling on everything.  
Alex had done a lot of dwelling recently.  
Not just dwelling on what was happening to her, but what had happened.  
She had heard in great detail all about how she had been found, but she hadn't been aware of it and it sounded strange when she heard it described - as if she wasn't there, but she had been.  
The thought that she had been lying injured, almost dying, on that barge on her only daughter's birthday sometimes made Alex feel sick with anger at herself.  
How could she have been so stupid?  
Admittedly she hadn't intended to return to the office for long. Just long enough to finish off the reports she had amassed. And that too was her own fault.  
If she had stayed late for just one evening she would have had them done.  
But she hadn't been able to because she never worked late in the office if she could avoid it.  
Alex didn't avoid working late out of laziness, but because in the evening she stopped being a D.I and simply became a Mum, a single one at that.  
Admittedly she did take work home, but it at least meant she was there to hear about the school projects, the new album by so-and-so, who had fallen out with who at school.  
And that was what meant so much to Alex.  
A thought Alex tried often to bury deep was that, if it hadn't been for Molly, she might just have admitted to wanting to stay in 1981.  
She felt terrible admitting it, but she had actually enjoyed her care free 1981.  
And Gene...if only she had been able to spend longer with him.  
Alex rubbed her forehead, another headache was coming.  
Inevitably Alex's fingers lingered on the part of her forehead the bullet had hit.  
That always sent a chill down her spine.  
It was wrong and it shouldn't be there.  
Wincing with the oncoming headache, Alex leant forward and picked up a bottle of pills of the coffee table. She was well rehearsed in this routine.  
She shook two small capsules from the brown glass bottle and opened the bottle of water than had been sat next to the pills.  
It took just seconds for Alex to take the medication, but she wished they took just seconds to work.  
Placing the bottle of water back down, Alex sat back in the sofa and shut her eyes.  
She hated this.  
It always started like this.  
A mild headache, like when someone has been straining their eyes by reading in the dark.  
Then it would increase as if someone were turning it up on a dial.  
The dizziness. There it was.  
Slowly, Alex moved her feet up onto the sofa and laid herself down.  
She stared up at the ceiling, everything slightly blurring.  
"Gene...", she slurred the name, barely a whisper.  
She would offer no objection if Gene were to hold her right now.  
She wanted him to tell her, to reassure her that everything would be alright, that she was broken now but would soon be fixed.  
Alex made a sniffle sound as she realised her eyes were welling up.  
She missed him.  
The rows, the sexual chemistry...she even missed hearing him call her "Bolly Knickers"  
And that was when the idea hit her dazed mind.  
Amongst the pain of her injury induced headache, Alex had made a decision.  
As soon as she felt up to it, she was going to do that which she had meant to do weeks ago.  
It may even give her mind and brain something to focus on.  
She would write that book.  
D.C.I Tyler, after all, wasn't going in "THE book" but having "a book all to himself" as Alex had said weeks ago on that fateful day.  
And, for good measure and a balanced analysis...Alex herself and her own experiences would be going into that book as well.  
It would be her way of paying tribute to not just a fallen Police officer, Tyler, but to her supposed 'Constructs' as well.  
Good God, how she missed them.  
Her fellow psychologists would have a field day analysing it all.  
But for now, Alex closed her eyes and pulled a cushion over her face to block out the light of the day.  
The pain in her head throbbed away as Alex waited for the damned medication to work and hope that maybe, just maybe, she might just fall back to sleep again.

End of chapter 3.


	4. Chapter 4

"Fancy a cup of tea Alex?",  
Nothing. No response.  
Evan wandered back from the kitchen and poked his head around the corner of the doorway to Alex's living room.  
"Alex?" he repeated.  
Alex was sat on her sofa again, her laptop computer on the coffee table and numerous items of paperwork strewn all around her.  
Paperwork to her left on the sofa.  
Paperwork to her right on the sofa.  
Paperwork on what small space remained next to the laptop on the coffee table, and for good measure, some paperwork on the carpeted floor.  
"Alex", Evan said yet again.  
Alex pulled herself away from one of the sheets of A4 she was so engrossed in.  
"Sorry Evan", Alex said apologetically, "I was miles away".  
"Really? I hadn't noticed", Evan smiled, relieved.  
For a moment there he thought something had happened.  
He always thought that when he failed to get a reply from Alex, be it verbally in the house or an answer on her telephone.  
"Do you fancy a cuppa?", he asked, "the kettle's on".  
"Why not?" Alex agreed, smiling thankfully at Evan.  
She could do with a cup of tea as she had been at this all morning.  
In fact, she had been at this for days.  
The chaos of paperwork that surrounded Alex were her case notes of D.C.I Sam Tyler.  
The cassette recordings he had made, the transcripts of his life in 1973, and even his career records dating back from the day he joined the Police Force.  
It certainly made for a very interesting read.  
Like her own experience, Sam's 1973 life had seemed to have been so very real.  
Pursuing this project had finally given Alex something to focus on,  
Yes she still had to put up with her brain not working properly, and having to take enough medication each day to sink a small ship, but she no longer felt quite so lost or worthless.  
In fact, she sometimes felt grateful to Sam for having taken the time to document his experiences.  
The depth of detail he had put in was staggering.  
Sometimes, Tyler's accounts of 1973 brought a smile to Alex's face and had even made her laugh out loud  
The thought of Sam and Gene going undercover to run a pub.  
Just the very thought of Gene attempting this feat had made her weep with laughter a couple of days ago.  
She knew what would have happened if that had been a 1981 experience of hers instead of one of Tyler's 1973 escapades.  
Alex concluded that, had she and Gene gone under cover to run a pub, they would have had to be carried out afterwards and the resulting hangover for both of them would have lasted for weeks.  
And earlier this morning, a Gene one-liner had given Alex a terrible case of the giggles.  
Poor Sam had apparently admitted to having once been in love, really in love, a reference to his long term girlfriend Maya.  
Clearly Gene had found this admission somewhat un-manly and labelled Tyler a...What was it again?  
"You...Great...Soft...Sissy...Nancy...Girly...French...Bender...Man United supporting...Poof!!"  
It had been a good ten minutes before Alex had been able to calm herself and read beyond that bit.  
She had read the notes through plenty of times, but she was going over them with a fine tooth comb this time. She wanted every detail.  
"Tea"  
Again, Alex had failed to notice Evan.  
"Earth calling D.I Drake, come in, come in", Evan chuckled slightly as he set the mug of tea down on what small empty space he could find on the cluttered table.  
"Soooo sorry again", Alex said looking apologetic.  
"Don't worry", Evan assured her as he sat down in an easy chair the other side of the room with his own tea "It's good to see you busy again".  
Alex smiled warmly.  
"Thanks", she said, "Your help has meant a lot Evan. With me, Molly, everything".  
"It's what I'm here for", Evan nodded, "It's part of the job description".  
"I don't know how I'll ever repay you", Alex said with genuine gratitude in her voice.  
"Alex", Evan spoke up, "don't talk daft now".  
"But you took so much time off", Alex began but was cut off by Evan raising his hand, indicating for her to stop.  
"I took time off from my own legal firm", Evan assured her, "I am my own boss after all".  
Alex remained silent for a few moments, smiling.  
"Thank you so much", she said again.  
"It's not a problem", Evan answered.  
He paused for a few moments.  
"Just don't go doing it again", he smiled.  
Alex poked a childish tongue out at Evan, "I'll try to avoid it", she laughed.  
Laughing was something Alex Drake hadn't done for weeks, and it felt good.  
She took a sip of the hot tea and placed the mug back down again before picking up her pen.  
Alex jotted a few roughly scribbled notes at the side of one of the transcripts and underlined a couple of sentences.  
Her handwriting was better today than it had been earlier in the week - another annoyance she had to put up with.  
She looked up at Evan again.  
He had picked up his copy of today's Times and was lost in it.  
A question burned in Alex's mind but she was loathe to ask it.  
Loathe to ask it because it could sound like it was coming from a mad woman.  
It could sound incredibly insensitive.  
Or she might not like the answer.  
Alex thought for a few moments, biting the end of her pen as she pondered what move to make, or whether to make the move at all.  
Slowly, Alex got to her feet, picking up the mug of tea as she went.  
"I'm just popping upstairs", Alex stated, not giving anything away.  
"Can you manage?" Evan lowered his newspaper, "need a hand up?".  
Alex shook her head.  
"No, I'm quite good today", she said and raised her mug slightly, "See, I can even hold a mug of tea without dropping it".  
Alex had meant that to sound light hearted, but it wasn't.  
Her damaged brain's damned stupid ability to be able to do things perfectly fine one day, but to be incapable of the very same simple tasks the next day was something Alex was both frustrated and embarrassed by.  
But it was now a fact of life.  
"Okay", Evan nodded and raised his newspaper back up, "Give me a shout if you need me".  
"Will do", Alex promised and left the room.  
She headed up the stairs, keeping a hand on the banister in case her brain experienced another blip and caused her to lose her footing.  
She had done that already the other week.  
At the top of the stairs, Alex listened.  
No movement in the house.  
Evan hadn't moved, he was still studying The Times.  
"Good", Alex muttered, almost silently.  
She pushed open the door to a spare room, a junk room, and placed the tea down on a box.  
In it were several boxes of things from the past.  
She had no idea where to start searching, or if the item she sought even existed.  
With a hefty sigh, Alex opened the nearest box and began to dig through it.  
Paperwork of Tim and Caroline Price's legal firm inhabited this box.  
Pages and pages of letters, bills etc.  
What a different era that had been, Alex thought as she marvelled at the fact that everything had been hand typed. Not saved on a computer and printed up like nowadays.  
She gave up on that box and moved on.  
Alex raised her eyebrows at an item near the top in the second dusty box.  
Her school report. 1981. Just prior to the death of her parents.  
She remembered this one.  
Quietly, Alex read the report to herself out loud.  
"Alexandra is a very bright child but lets herself down by becoming distracted all too easily".  
Alex made an indignant "Hmph!" sound as she read.  
"Occasionally her mind tends to wander".  
"Prophetic words if ever there were any...", Alex responded to the final line.  
She remembered bringing that report home with her on a last day of term.  
Although her overall grades had been excellent, she remembered her parents chastising her over the issue of distraction.  
Her Mother had hammered home the point about how important it was to pay attention and how those school fees were being wasted if she wasn't going to concentrate.  
Her Father had berated her along the very same lines too later than evening.  
That night, Alex had cried herself to sleep.  
"If only they'd known what was just around the corner", she said and exhaled sadly at the thought that one of her parents probably had known.  
"Enough of that", Alex pulled herself together.  
She put the report down and dug through this box rapidly.  
Nothing.  
This might even be a wild goose chase.  
But she needed confirmation.  
A box the other side of the room was marked "Caroline" in marker pen.  
Alex was vaguely aware that it contained some of her Mother's personal items, but she had never had an in depth look.  
Slowly, and with a new found respect for her Mother, Alex looked through the contents.  
Several of Caroline's personal diaries were contained within the box.  
They had been written in, almost daily, but Alex had never been able to bring herself to read them.  
It seemed an impolite thing to do, even though there was no one who would stop her.  
It just felt too disrespectful.  
Diaries were private, end of.  
But she kept them anyway.  
Alex too had a diary, but nobody would learn much from hers as she barely ever remembered to write in it these days.  
All that would be gleaned from hers would be dates of birthdays and when her car's M.O.T was due.  
She moved on.  
There were some thank you cards from grateful Price clients.  
An old, half used, cheque book.  
A letter from a friend in France.  
Caroline's passport.  
And an envelope.  
A unmarked brown A4 envelope.  
'It couldn't be...', Alex thought as she reached and held it before her.  
Alex felt uneasy as she slowly opened it, as if something awful might be about to jump out at her.  
It had to be something else, more documents maybe.  
But it wasn't.  
Alex's heart skipped a beat as she pulled the contents from the envelope.  
She had last seen these in 1981.  
The photographs.  
The photographs Martin Kennedy had used to try and blackmail her Mother.  
"Oh God...", Alex reacted in a clearly shocked whisper, "...They're real. They exist".  
The photographs left nothing to the imagination.  
A zoom lens had captured Evan and Caroline in the midst of a passionate affair.  
But how could they be real?  
Alex sat herself down and leant against the wall, the photographs in one hand, her other rubbing her eyes in confusion.  
"How can they be real?".  
Her psychologist brain searched for answers.  
Perhaps it stemmed from her buried memory of when she had caught her Mother and Evan in an embrace at the front door that night?  
She had hopped out of bed to come downstairs and get a drink and there they had been.  
Upon seeing them, they had broken their embrace and she had rushed back to bed.  
Nobody had ever mentioned it again and, at that age, little Alex had no real concept of relationships or affairs so she had given it no more thought.  
Could she have stumbled across the photographs as a child and, not understanding them at that age, forgotten that memory too?  
Could that be why she knew of them and had conjured them up in her 1981?  
If she had perhaps seen them from the corner of her eye then maybe her subconscious had recorded that fact and that was why they appeared to her in '81?  
"Oh God...", Alex cursed.  
1981 couldn't be real so those photographs couldn't possibly be here, now, in 2008.  
It just wasn't possible.  
Yet here they were, haunting her.  
Alex put the photographs back in the envelope.  
She couldn't bear to look at them.  
This had thrown everything on its head.  
Once again Alex would have re-evaluate her 1981 life.  
But before she could do any more work, she would have to tackle that issue that had been burning in the back of her mind downstairs.  
She now knew the answer to the question.  
Yes, her Mother really did have an affair with Evan.  
It wasn't something her mind had constructed.  
But now she would have to confront him about it.  
Confront him after all he had done for herself and Molly in recent weeks.  
But she did require all the facts.  
She couldn't write about both her and Tyler's experiences, and give a proper analysis, if she chose to simply ignore very relevant facts.  
She would have to tackle Evan.  
Everything was significant and no details could be left out of her analysis.  
A thought then hit Alex.  
"Did he even know about the photographs?"  
In silence, Alex thought for several seconds.  
She hadn't told a soul about her 1981 experiences. She couldn't.  
If she had then the Powers That Be would have thought her mad, an obvious side effect of the bullet to her head.  
She might even have been sectioned for her own good had she told people she had been transported to 1981, met her attacker, met her parents, got pissed up and slept with a Thatcherite Wnker, snuck into an M.O.D facility...It would sound crazy.  
She got to her feet and took in a deep breath.  
She downed the rest of the tea and placed the envelope under her arm.  
She may not be a D.I by profession anymore but once a copper, always a copper.  
She would proceed with her investigations.  
Leaving the room, Alex shut the door behind her and made her way back down the stairs.  
Alex felt a pang of guilt for dredging up what she was about to reveal, but at the same time she felt a determination to sort out just what on Earth had happened to her recently.  
Entering the living room once again, Alex saw Evan was still sat in the easy chair.  
He was watching one of the sattelite news channels.  
Some MP was being interviewed about a sex scandal - ironic really.  
"Evan", Alex broke the silence.  
"Oh...", he stirred, "find what you were looking for?"  
"I did find something, yes", Alex said, her tone vulnerable.  
Taking a step forward, Alex dropped the envelope into Evan's lap.  
He looked at her, a baffled expression on his face.  
"Go on", Alex urged, "open it then".  
Evan could sense a change in her since Alex had returned to the room yet he had no idea what might have upset or disturbed her.  
He took the envelope in his hands and opened it, peering in.  
Unable to make out the contents properly, he pulled out the paper...not paper...photographs from inside.  
A look of both horror and shame appeared on his face.  
"Alex I...", he began but his voice trailed off.  
Alex said nothing, she simply kept her eyes on Evan.  
Her expression was a mixture of both anger and disappointment.  
She was unsure why she felt so angry.  
She had already dealt with all of this back in her 1981.  
But now, in 2008, the photographs being present once again made the revelation feel new once more.  
"It was a long time ago...", Evan said where he sat, he looked down at the floor in shame  
"And it didn't go on for long", he assured as if that would serve to justify his actions.  
Alex said nothing, content to listen from where she stood.  
"Tim was away, he was away a lot", Evan attempted to explain.  
"Caroline was left with a huge workload, the house to take care of, a daughter", Evan paused as he tried to piece his words and thoughts together, "I tried to help at first, do what I could to lighten the burden. And things just went from there...You've got to understand Alex, it wasn't planned."  
Alex laughed.  
It wasn't an amused laugh at all.  
"It wasn't planned...", Alex repeated.  
She looked down with a hint of anger that she tried hard to bury.  
"You know my ex-husband said the very same thing before he left Molly and I!!"  
Alex had said that much louder than she had intended.  
Evan got to his feet and reached out a hand to Alex's shoulder.  
She pushed it away.  
"This was different", Evan assured Alex as she became visibly upset.  
"Different?!", Alex shouted at Evan, her emotions beginning to get out of check.  
"Different?!", she continued as the adrenalin raced, "Different in as far as Molly's father never tried to kill us with a car bomb!!"  
Silence followed.  
Several moments of complete silence.  
Evan looked shocked, like he had been hit by a revelation.  
Alex too looked shocked, knowing she had said too much, way too much.  
Evan's mind raced as it processed Alex's words.  
How could she know?  
Had someone in the Met discovered something and told her?  
Maybe one of those Officers who goes over old unsolved murders? Cold cases?  
But the evidence had been destroyed?  
Or had Alex simply put together some childhood memories and hit the nail on the head?  
After all, she was bright enough and trained to a high level in the Human mind and its workings..  
"I'm sorry...", Alex said, her turn for the sound of shame to shape her voice, "I shouldn't have said that".  
"How did you...", Evan began, still stunned.  
"I've known for a little while", Alex admitted.  
She took a deep breath and calmed herself somewhat.  
Evan said nothing but reached out again to Alex who, this time, didn't push him away.  
"It's not your fault", Alex admitted, "it takes two to Tango after all".  
Evan pulled Alex towards him and hugged her.  
"No, I take the blame", Evan said with grief in his voice, "if I had just been stronger, thought about the consequences".  
"No", Alex shook her head slightly as she hugged him back, "No, you couldn't have known how my Father would react. Nobody could have foreseen something like that".  
"I tried to stop him...really I did", Evan said, his voice wavering.  
Was he crying?  
Alex broke the hug and looked at Evan.  
He looked as if he had just been broken, tears filling his eyes.  
"I tried Alex", he sobbed and dropped back into the chair, wiping his eyes.  
"Tim sent me a video tape by courier saying what he was about to do".  
Alex too sat back down and listened.  
"The moment I'd played it I ran after you all"  
"But I was just a few damned seconds too late"  
Alex recalled everything Evan described.  
Yet it was a very odd thing to recall as her memory of the event now came from two perspectives, her younger self chasing the red balloon and her older self watching in horror as events unfolded.  
"I know", Alex nodded, herself feeling her emotions being tugged by the memories and Evans outpouring.  
"I never did anything with the intention of hurting you Alex", Evan assured her, "and I wished desperately for such a long time afterwards that Tim had just taken his vengeance out on me, not you and Caroline".  
Alex listened.  
"He should have just set the bomb to kill me on my drive to work", Evan admitted, grief still in his voice.  
"Don't talk like that", Alex urged Evan.  
She picked up some of the paperwork she had left on the coffee table next to the laptop and gestured for Evan to come over to her.  
Evan nodded, got to his feet and sat next to Alex after she cleared him a space.  
"You know what this is don't you?".  
Evan peered at the paperwork, the notes and records of a Manchester D.C.I.  
"That's your research materials on that chap who threw himself from a Police station in Manchester isn't it?", Evan checked as he regained some composure, "The project you were working on before you were...well, before all this".  
Alex nodded.  
"I'm so sorry Evan but that's why I needed to show you the photographs", Alex admitted.  
Evan appeared a little confused.  
"This is the chap who thought he was in 1973 I recall you saying, right?", Evan checked.  
"Yup", again Alex nodded.  
"Sorry", Evan said unsure, "What does this have to do with me? I've never met this fellow".  
Alex waited and pursed her lips.  
How did you word something like this?  
"Go on...", Evan prompted after a few awkward moments of silence, "...please".  
"Evan. I know you're going to think me crazy", Alex began sounding clearly apprehensive, "and please don't send me back to the hospital, or even tell Molly when I say this".  
"Alright", Evan promised, "You know you can tell me anything Alex".  
"After I was shot", Alex began...  
She paused again, a great moment's silence.  
"After I was shot I had an experience very similar to the one described by D.C.I Tyler. Only for me, it was 1981".  
There, she had said it.  
Evan raised his eyebrows slightly.  
"You dreamed of 1981 you mean?", he asked.  
"I don't think dreamed is the right word", Alex shook her head, "everything was so real".  
"Well, the mind is a vast thing", Evan placed a hand on Alex's hand for reassurance.  
"But I have to make sense of it", Alex said with determination, "So I'm not just going to write an analysis of D.C.I Tyler...I'm going to include my own experiences".  
"Sounds fair enough", Evan nodded.  
"Evan...", Alex continued to explain, "I knew of those photographs because I saw them in 1981, my unconscious 1981. I saw the car bombing, I saw you run towards the car shouting 'Wait'".  
"So you need to name and shame me in your report?", Evan guessed.  
Alex bit her lip and looked down.  
She nodded.  
"It's only for psychologists to analyse, to try and sort out what the Hell happened to me and Tyler", Alex assured Evan, "It's not a novel or anything like that, not for public consumption".  
Evan looked down and then back at Alex.  
"It's the least I deserve".  
"What?", Alex asked.  
"My actions cost you your parents Alex", Evan conceded, squeezing Alex's hand.  
"It's not about naming and shaming", Alex filed the papers back together and handed them to Evan, "I just have to try and understand what's happened to me".  
"You have my blessing", Evan nodded and flicked through the selection of research material, "But Alex...I sat with you in the hospital for eight weeks. I'm not a psychologist but, as a lawyer, I can safely say that all the evidence points to you having had a dream. Maybe even an extremely in depth one, you're the expert on the subconscious, not me...but the only place you went to after you were found was the hospital, now, in 2008".  
"I know...I know", Alex admitted, after all, her physical body had certainly never left 2008.  
"But if you want to write all this up for analysis", Evan said as his voice filled with encouragement, "Then you go for it...It could even help other people who suffer something similar".  
Alex smiled in genuine gratitude.  
"Thanks Evan, for all your support".  
Evan got back to his feet once again, "Fancy another cuppa then?", he winked.  
"Oh go on", Alex nodded, "since it's been quite a morning".  
"And then you'd better think about getting ready...", Evan hinted.  
"Ready?", Alex looked up, confused.  
"What day is it Alex?", Evan pointed to a calendar on the wall.  
"Oh Christ!", Alex sat bolt upright and began to shut down her laptop, "Wednesday! Hospital check up!".  
"You see? Totally lost without me around! ", Evan laughed as he made his way to the kitchen, his voice fading with distance.  
The weekly hospital check up.  
Alex had forgotten all about that.  
A brain scan...  
Check no infection had come from the bullet...  
Make sure she was seeing properly...  
Ask if she had experienced any seizures...  
Check her medication was working...  
...and to keep a check on her annoying post shooting side effects.  
If everything stayed normal, Alex's current definition of normal at least, then the appointments would eventually become once a fortnight and so on.  
Just time for a cuppa, then Evan would drive her to the hospital for her appointment as he had done every week so far.

Enf of Chapter 4.


	5. Chapter 5

It was quiet in the coffee shop today.  
It wasn't too far from Alex's house and it was well within walking distance.  
On a pleasant and sunny morning like this it had been an enjoyable walk.  
Alex had sat herself at a table by the window, the sunshine through the glass warming her.  
From here she could watch the world go by, watch the traffic and the people going about their business.  
The psychologist in her sometimes analysed the behaviour of the people she watched, especially the traffic warden who was cautiously looking left and right before pouncing on a black Vauxhall Vectra that was parked on double yellow lines.  
She watched, studying his predator like actions as he scribbled out a ticket, stuck it to the windscreen and then scurried away before the owner could return.  
Fascinating, just sitting there watching peoples behaviour.  
Alex had begun visiting this coffee shop regularly in the last fortnight, on the days she felt up to it at least.  
It got her out of the house, got some fresh air in her lungs and the walk was good exercise.  
She would go into the local corner shop to buy some milk, paper, maybe a magazine and then stop off for a coffee on the way home.  
Not a strenuous effort by any means, but enough for her at the moment.  
Indoors had begun to feel like a prison to Alex, and getting out and about again was the next step of her recovery...even if Evan had constantly reminded her to keep her mobile on at all times.  
Alex stirred her latte...still a little too hot at the moment.  
Instead, she took a bite of the slice of cake she had allowed herself today.  
Usually Alex just had a coffee, but today she had decided to treat herself to a slice of cake. Nothing fancy, just plain sponge cake.  
Full of fat and sugar, probably, but she let herself off just this once as a way of saying 'well done' to herself.  
Well done because, after weeks of toil and research, Alex's report into both her and D.C.I Tyler's experience had finally been published in academic circles.  
Titled "Mad? In a coma? Or back in time?", Alex's study and breakdown of the events had run to just under one thousand pages.  
Everything was significant and she had made a detailed breakdown of possible reasons for the human mind to conjure these things up...whilst leaving the reader in no doubt that she still had no viable explanation for some of the things she experienced, such as discovering the truth of her parents fate.  
Now all Alex had to do was sit back and wait for the reactions from other, some even more highly trained, psychologists.  
Part of Alex was looking forward to the responses.  
Maybe someone would come up with a very viable explanation that had never before crossed her mind, and everything would suddenly fall into place.  
The other half of her was dreading the academic world simply labelling her as 'bonkers'.  
And that was why Alex was tapping her fingers nervously on several envelopes on the table next to her coffee.  
These had been delivered in the post this morning and she had decided to bring them with her and open them here.  
They didn't look like bills at all, they looked like letters, all addressed to her.  
Finally, Alex took a sip of the hot latte and began to open the first letter...  
This one was hand written...

_"Dear Ms Drake,  
I have just read, with great interest, your study of the events experienced by both yourself and the Manchester based Police officer.  
I was fascinated by your descriptions of the events supposedly experienced by your good self and the Manchester officer.  
My own feeling is as follows..._

D.C.I Tyler suffered a traumatic event the day he was hit by the car, this being abduction of his girlfriend.  
He himself admits in your notes that he was, emotionally, in pieces as he stepped from his car and into the path of the oncoming vehicle.  
Therefore, the last thing playing on his mind was trauma.  
In the prolonged deep coma that followed, it is possible that his brain was so focussed on trauma that it took this opportunity to study the most traumatic event of his life - this being his father leaving the family in 1973.

Your account of your own experience with 1981 would, to me, also indicate something similar.  
On the morning of your shooting, you had dealt with a hostage situation which had nearly gone very wrong and had, regretfully, involved your own flesh and blood - your young daughter.  
It doesn't take a psychologist to point out that this would be deeply traumatic for any mother.  
However, your trauma didn't end there as you go on to describe being taken at gunpoint by this extremely unpleasant sounding Layton 'gentleman' before finally being shot by him.

During both of your encounters with Mr. Layton that morning, he constantly brought up the subject of your late parents.  
This may already have begun to trigger a train of thought in your subconscious regarding the subject of 1981.  
A train of thought that, perhaps, you were not even consciously aware of at the time.  
Perhaps the trigger for this was Mr. Layton's references to the Bowie lyric, "I'm happy, hope you're happy too" which was playing in the car moments before the bombing?

After you were shot it seems to me, once again, that your mind has focussed on the deeply traumatic events you had the misfortune to experience as a child in 1981.

As for how you discovered the truth about your parents deaths, I must admit to being somewhat perplexed myself.

Could it be possible that you saw, read or overheard something as a child that you never thought relevant to anything at the time?  
Could you have overheard Mr. Evan White confiding in someone but buried it deep within your subconscious?  
As I am sure you are aware, sometimes the mind buries that which it doesn't understand.

I will close by saying that I think you were very brave in putting all of this into print.  
I think your very detailed descriptions clearly demonstrate that there is far more to the human mind that we will ever understand in our lifetimes.

I also hope that this Mr. Layton is apprehended soon.

And finally, I do wish you a speedy and continued recovery and I do hope your daughter is well too.

Yours sincerely,

D.I. Catherine Blake,  
Hampshire Constabulary"

"That wasn't so bad", Alex muttered almost silently and allowed herself a sigh of relief.  
She was relieved to have been taken seriously by at least one reader and not ridiculed.  
Alex decided she would pen a reply to this D.I. Blake later that afternoon.  
From the way the letter was worded it sounded like D.I. Blake was also a police psychologist.  
Maybe Alex had even encountered her at some point. She had liaised with many other Forces on cases and Hampshire was just one of them.  
She smiled as she remembered that Gene would almost certainly have something to say about "them bunch of nancies down south".  
London was about as down South as Gene would ever allow himself to set foot.  
The thoughts once again of Gene disturbed Alex.  
A key part of her investigation had been attempting to discover if there had ever been a Manchester D.C.I by the name of Gene Hunt.  
Never in all of Alex's investigations had a search proved so fruitless, or so awkward.  
Initially she had started with the Met in London.  
Her immediate search had run into a metaphorical brick wall within five minutes flat on the day she returned to the station to clear her desk.  
That act in itself had been a very strange feeling.  
Alex had waited until late one evening to retrieve her things from the station.  
It had been her ultimate acknowledgment of the fact that she would not be returning to work, and her reluctance had not been well hidden.  
She had deliberately left it until late so as to avoid seeing her now ex-colleagues.  
Alex hadn't liked to admit it but she had chosen to do it this way because she felt ashamed.  
Ashamed because she was no longer Detective Inspector Drake of the Met, thorn in the side of numerous criminals...and the station coffee machine...she never had figured out how that thing worked.  
She was now just Alex, a bullet lodged in her brain, the resulting damage preventing it from functioning properly.  
She was damaged goods.  
With a mental kick, Alex snapped herself back from those thoughts and took another sip of the latte.  
Her search for Gene was something that frustrated her.  
That evening she returned to the station, she had searched the records.  
To her irritation, there was a huge gap in them.  
Upon questioning one or two people, Alex had learned the reason why.  
In the early 1980s, all the personnel files were on paper and filed away in the records department.  
In 1986, half the building had been gutted by a fire which had been caused by an electrical fault in the wiring.  
Every record from 1979 to 1986 had been destroyed.  
It was an information black hole.  
Disappointed as Alex had been, she hadn't allowed that to put her off.  
Instead she had written to Greater Manchester Police and made some enquiries at their end.  
Once again, it was as if fate was determined that Alex was not to find anything out.  
The officer she had contacted in Manchester had indeed been very helpful and tried extremely hard to help her.  
But the story came back that the station in Manchester had seen major renovation at some point between Sam's 1973 and his 2006.  
There had indeed been records in Manchester but they had been stored terribly.  
Nothing had been stored in any order. Files, even case files, had just been chucked into a records department without a care.  
Over the years, things such as general wear and tear and a burst water pipe had made 90 of the records of the first half of the 1970's unreadable.  
All that was salvaged were scraggly old water damaged bits of paper, the ink having long since run and faded.  
Completely useless.  
Alex was left in no doubt to the truth of Sam's description of the Manchester station in 1973.  
His own descriptions should have been enough to warn her of the mess the records would have been left in.  
'One day', Alex had thought, 'one day I'll find out for sure even if it's the last thing I do'.  
If Alex still had police clearance she might have been able to do a search on the Police National Computer...but even that privilege had been taken away from her now.  
She had thought of asking one of her now ex-colleagues to do it for her on the quiet...but she had reconsidered.  
It was only to be used for police business and she couldn't ask someone to risk getting into trouble on her account.  
This was something Alex simply had to do herself.  
After another gaze from the window, Alex began to open the second letter.  
This one was typed.

_"Dear Alex,  
Please do excuse me writing to you._

I have read your 'Mad? In a coma? Or back in time?' piece very recently.  
It is an extremely well written item and made for fascinating reading.

However, I really do feel it is something you are dwelling on far too much.

Please take no offence at this but I really do think you should consider talking to someone.  
Clearly your childhood experiences in 1981 have traumatised you and, even when unconscious for a long time it seems you may still be struggling to deal with it.

Have you considered counselling?  
There are some very good counsellors who can certainly help.

Once again I ask that you please do not take offence at my suggestion.

Yours sincerely,

John Lloyd  
University of Shefield"

Alex puffed out a sigh at that one and simply let that letter drop to the table.  
She placed her elbow on the table and rested her chin in her hand.  
"One all", she said very quietly to herself as she weighed up the results so far of how many took her seriously and how many thought she had lost the plot, "to be expected I guess".  
She was sure this gentleman had genuinely meant no offence and had clearly written out of concern, yet Alex still felt a little patronised by the suggestion that she needed counselling.  
After all, this man had not experienced what Alex had. He may have read her writings but that could never be a substitute for what had really happened.  
Alex also felt that the idea of counselling was ironic to say the very least.  
She had been offered counselling a short while after waking up back in the hospital but had politely declined the offer.  
As a trained psychologist Alex could see very little sense in talking through, and trying to come to terms with, her shooting and the results of it...with another psychologist of all people.  
And that was without throwing in the 1981 elements of her story.  
Occasionally, when she reflected upon the subject of counselling, Alex did feel a little hypocritical.  
In the many cases where she had dealt with victims, be they victims of robbery, drugs, assault, rape, or the worst of all - breaking the news to a family that a loved one had died...the first thing Alex always did was offer counselling.  
And yet there she had been, declining it herself.  
As far as Alex was concerned, writing "Mad? In a Coma? Or back in time?" had been her counselling.  
There had certainly been no details left out, and in a way, it had been like talking her experiences through with a stranger.  
Lots of strangers.  
In an odd kind of way, it had been therapeutic.  
'So that's one for 'onto-something' ', Alex looked at the first letter, 'and one for 'she's-nuts' ' she looked at the second.  
Only one letter remained.  
This one looked rather official.  
Maybe it was a bill after all.  
Had she forgotten a payment for something?  
Alex wracked her brains but nothing came to mind.  
Taking a last bite of the cake, Alex began to open the final letter, a little apprehensive that 'she's-nuts' might be about to go 2-1 up on the score sheet.  
It was indeed official and from a company.  
It wasn't from any psychologists, police officers or even university lecturers...  
Alex's curiosity piqued.  
It was from a television company.  
A company named Kudos Film & Television Ltd.  
'Ooooookay', Alex thought, unsure of why a television company would write to her.

_"Dear Ms Drake,  
I do hope this letter finds you in good health._

Kudos Film and Television Ltd produces high quality British television drama and has been doing this to a high standard for a number of years.

Recently, your academic study titled "Mad? In a coma? Or back time?" was brought to our attention by two excellent producers who had encountered and become fascinated by it.

Despite your writings having only ever been intended as an academic study, we at Kudos feel it has tremendous potential.  
We feel that British television has been lacking in quality for a number of years and our producers feel that this would be a very interesting concept to base a television drama on for the likes of Channel 4 or the BBC.

We would, of course, require your consent for the rights but we are happy to answer any questions you may have.

We feel extremely confident in how this should turn out.  
Initialy we foresee the series as being based around the first half of your study, this being the story of D.C.I Sam Tyler of Greater Manchester Police.  
If given the go ahead we plan to create this series under the title "Life on Mars", as the song does appear relevant at both the beginning and the end of Mr. Tyler's story.  
In a preliminary discussion with our producers we have decided that we would pursue the casting of some of Britain's top actors such as John Simm for the role of D.C.I Tyler and we imagine Philip Glenister as being ideal for the role of D.C.I Hunt.

Should "Life on Mars" prove as big a success as we feel it very well may, we would then like to explore your own story should you give us permission.  
This will only happen if "Life on Mars" is successful but we have discussed your story with our producers and they feel it would work as a post "Life on Mars" spin-off or follow up.  
Provisionally we have the title "Ashes to ashes" in mind and I am sure you need no explanation as to why.

If this idea is appealing to you, or you have any questions, please do call us on the number printed on the bottom of the letter.

Many thanks for your time and we at Kudos hope your recovery is proceeding well,

Yours sincerely,

Simon Jones  
Kudos Film and Television Ltd"

Alex read the letter again.  
Maybe she was losing the plot after all?  
Had that letter just said what she thought it said?  
After the second reading, Alex put the letter down.  
It was a rare occasion that Alex Drake was speechless, but this letter had succeeded in that feat.  
Alex sat, staring at the letter, her eyebrows raised and jaw having dropped.  
A car blaring its horn at another motorist brought Alex back into coherent thought.  
"Bloody hell!" she exclaimed in a loud whisper as she stared at the letter that lay in front of her, "Just...Bloody hell!".  
Alex finished her coffee quickly, stuffed the letters into the corner shop carrier bag and scurried out of the coffee shop.  
She was bound for home...and Alex Drake had a phone call to make!

End of chapter 5


	6. Chapter 6

Gene stood completely still.

His black overcoat flapped slightly as a light breeze blew.

His eyes observed the scene before him but he said nothing.

He thought nothing.

He couldn't think.

It was now out of his hands.

He breathed steadily but within his chest, his heart was racing.

Just moments ago he had been briskly advised to move aside by the arriving ambulance crew.

Gene had been doing all he could, working as hard as he could, but the experts were now present.

Still, Gene's eyes observed the scene before him, barely allowing a moment to blink in case he missed a development.

He clenched his fists at his side and breathed out hard.

He could barely stand this.

'Just get on with it!' he mentally urged the medics, 'bloody do something!'.

The medics were indeed working hard with many years experience to call on.

Gene could hear the voices of the medics but was unable to make out what they were saying as they worked.

Gene's eyes still refused to waver from the sight of his D.I. lying on her back in the road.

She was partly obscured by the medics at her side, but Gene could make out her form.

He could make out the white leather jacket, an arm outstretched to one side and an unmoving hand protruding from the sleeve.

Similarly he could see the distinctive tight dark blue jeans and white boots, again no movement, just sprawled on the floor like a rag doll.

But Gene could see nothing else, just the medics at Alex's side. One each side and one with his back to Gene.

The D.C.I bit his lip hard as he buried the urge to shout at them to get on with it, to stop poncing about and help her.

Ray and Chris kept a discreet distance, near to the Quattro, knowing that Gene wouldn't want company at this moment.

Chris, anxiously scuffed his shoes repeatedly on the road surface..

Ray simply paced up and down the driver's side of the Quattro and kicked a large stone as hard as he could into a nearby hedge.

Everybody was on edge and observed the medics as they worked.

One was clearly pushing his hands repeatedly down hard onto Alex's chest and had been doing so for some time.

Finally, the medics looked to each other.

One nodded and a moment later the other nodded back in agreement and stopped his work.

There was a mumble from them, something about the time, and they checked their watches.

Gene opened his mouth and took a big stride forward.

Ray and Chris looked up, the development becoming clear even to them.

Before Gene could begin to speak, one of the medics got to his feet and looked him straight in the eye.

"I'm very sorry sir", the medic, a tall man in his late thirties began, "I'm afraid we did all we could but your colleague was just too badly hurt".

"Then do something bloody more!!", Gene demanded loudly, refusing to accept the facts before him.

"Sir I really am sorry", the medic assured Gene, "but your colleague has been unresponsive for too long. There really was nothing anybody could have done. I'm afraid the officer was pronounced dead a few moments ago".

"She can't be...", Gene said, his voice crumbling to a quieter almost-whisper, "she bloody can't be...".

Momentarily Gene was in a world of his own as he stared at Alex.

Slowly he approached her and each stride accelerated until he was at her side and on his knees on the dusty road.Gene was visibly shaken and both Ray and Chris knew to keep back.

The second D.I. he had lost in as many years, only this one was different.

"Come on talk to me Bolly", Gene urged, "Bloody talk to me Bolls!".

Alex lay in the road before the crumbling Gene.

Her eyes were half open, as if looking at Gene, yet there was no life, no warmth, no focus.

Gently, his hand trembling slightly with adrenalin, Gene's gloved fingers brushed over Alex's face and eased her eyes shut.

'Sleeping...' he thought to himself as he continued to try and take in the sight before him.

He had always wanted to see Alex sleeping.

He had longed to one day wake up next to her and observe her sleeping face, without the worries she clearly had but had never divulged, without her smart-alec remarks, just Alex, simply sleeping.

Still trembling from adrenalin and emotion, Gene brushed his gloved fingers slowly over Alex's lips.

Her mouth was partly open where the medics had attempted to force her to breathe.

Gently, he stroked her bottom lip with his thumb.

And then he breathed hard.

Gene Hunt was a strong man.

A very strong man.

A force to be reckoned with and never to be crossed.

And he was crumbling.

The sight of the bullet wound above Alex's left eye.

Blood was slowly trickling from it and running its way down the side of her head towards her ear.

It was already seeping into Alex's dark hair, beginning to dry and clot into the delicately permed strands.

Gene closed his eyes momentarily and breathed hard once again.

He began to slowly place an arm around Alex's shoulders, gently lifting her towards his kneeling form, his upper arm supporting her head.

There was nothing Gene could do.

The Manc Lion was falling to pieces more and more with each passing moment.

He knew his eyes were welling up, he had felt it coming.

Gene looked Alex in the face as he held her in his big, warm and strong arms.

And slowly he lowered his face towards hers.

He felt her cheek against his as he held her tightly.

And then D.C.I Gene Hunt broke.

His form shook as he broke down, his overcoat shielding both himself and Alex from both the breeze and the gaze of onlookers as he sobbed.

"I loved you, you posh tart".

"Gene!!"

Alex sat bolt upright.

Her heart raced ten to the dozen inside her.

She felt hot and she was sweating and breathing hard.

And then she felt the pain.

Alex flopped back down into her bed.

It had been a dream.

A dream reliving her final moments in 1981, the shooting at the derelict house.

She rubbed her eyes and held her hands over her face.

Her head was throbbing, feeling like it could explode at any moment.

She knew what it was and she recognised it immediately.

This was one of her tremendous bullet induced headaches.

Rarely were they so bad as to wake her up in the night like this.

Alex winced as she lay there, looking up into the darkness.

If she made the slightest movement it agitated the pain, yet she had no other option.

"Pills...", Alex urged herself in a whisper.

Slowly she turned her head to one side on the pillow, searching for her medication and bottle of water.

Alex sighed, frustrated and upset with herself.

Everything was a blur.

This was a bad one.

She squinted her eyes to try and see in the dark.

Usually Alex could make out the items on her bedside table by the light from her digital alarm clock.

Right now, Alex's vision had blurred to such low quality that she couldn't even make out what the time was.

She sighed sadly.

Reluctantly, Alex had been forced to admit to herself that the headaches were gradually becoming worse and more debilitating with time.

She would have to mention it at her next hospital check up.

"Maybe they'll up the dose", she muttered under her breath, "or just shoot me again and finish the job"

Alex rolled over onto her side, she needed that medication and she couldn't justify calling for Molly at this hour.

The head pain made itself known again as it caught up with Alex's movement.

She grimaced and dropped her face deep into her pillow.

The dizziness.

The room was spinning as if it were a playground ride.

Any other time she could have called for someone to simply pass her medication.

It severely dented Alex's pride every time she had to ask for assistance, but at this hour it was not even an option.

Alex was certainly not going to wake her sleeping daughter, who had school in a few hours time, and Evan was at his own house.

With a deep breath, Alex decided she had her bearings.

She reached out an arm and felt for the bedside table.

She could vaguely make it out, but details were far too fuzzy to identify anything clearly.

She felt her way over the surface, like a Police fingertip search of a crime scene.

"Got it!" she whispered triumphantly.

The bottle of pills was sat next to what felt like the alarm clock.

Double checking with her fingers that it was her pill bottle, Alex picked it off the bedside table to retrieve it.

There was a rattling sound as it hit the floor, causing the pills inside to jangle.

"Shit!" Alex cursed in agony, anger coming to the boil.

She rolled back over onto her back and ran her fingers through her hair, pulling it slightly in frustration.

"Shit! Bloody shit!" she exclaimed to herself in a barely controlled loud whisper, "Bloody invalid!".

Finally Alex let go of her hair and tried to calm her emotions.

She was angry, very angry, with herself and her own inability to perform such a simple task as picking something up.

She sighed.

She would have to grin and bare it, hope that it would eventually pass or that her brain would be merciful and let her pass out.

She wasn't going to get out of bed and search for her medication on her hands and knees.

She would simply have to go without.

She knew there was no way she could even stand unaided at the moment anyway.

After a large unhappy sigh, Alex simply lay there.

She thought of her dream, hoping that her brain wouldn't object to simple thought.

That last day back in 1981.

She had been so cocky.

So utterly convinced she could talk that criminal out of the building.

Demonstrating her 'stuff' right under Gene's nose and eagerly anticipating the moment she could walk up to him, bring herself nose to nose with him and utter "Told you so".

Was that flirting in her book?

She guessed it was.

It was also about proving she was equal.

Not in the equal opportunities sense, but more in an 'anything you can do, I can do better' sense.

Alex allowed herself a very small smile at the thought, it was all the pain would allow.

She had enjoyed sparring with Gene. It was like winding up a big toy and watching it go.

But the dream made Alex feel uncomfortable.

Had that really been what happened next?

Alex's last memory of 1981 was the sensation of falling to the ground after being shot and feeling someone, Gene, trying to help her.

And then everything had, very slowly, blurred back into 2008.

Had her 1981 world continued?

Had Gene really been so crushed by her supposed death?

The thought caused a pang in her heart.

Alex missed Gene terribly, even now, months after waking up.

She had been extremely curious about him, especially his intentions towards her.

'Did he just want to shag me?' she pondered, 'Or was there really something more?'.

Alex was never sure.

Gene Hunt had always been an enigma of a man. Never giving anything away if he could help it.

Yet she knew, and had seen on several occasions, that there was indeed a kind and caring heart beneath all that cowboy bravado.

Alex tutted.

"Fantasising over a man who was almost certainly nothing more than an imaginary construct!", Alex sighed, "Whilst being tormented with pain by the only piece of evidence from my shooting...which just so happens to be lodged in my brain".

Alex allowed herself a small nod.

That did seem a correct assessment of the current situation.

She grabbed another pillow and rolled onto her side once again.

Alex badly wanted to go back to sleep again. She was tired out and she had to meet the producers of that "Life on Mars" show at midday.

After all, the first episode was due for broadcast next week and she still hadn't seen a preview of it.

If she didn't get back to sleep she really would look like death in the morning.

Alex pulled the pillow towards her and hugged it tight.

'Maybe if I pretend it's Gene', she thought as she closed her eyes and begged for sleep to reclaim her.

End of chapter 6.


	7. Chapter 7

It was very quiet in the Drake household this morning.

Evan had already stopped by as usual on his way to the office and made sure everything was alright.

He had made his usual offer of picking up any shopping that may be needed during the day, despite the fact that Alex had long since been more than capable of strolling down to the local shops.

There had been no need for Evan to run Molly to school today, despite it being a Wednesday.

The school was having a 'teacher training day' and all the children had the day off.

From the top of the stairs, Molly crept slowly across the landing and quietly pushed a door slightly open, trying hard not to make any sound.

She peaked through the gap and peered into her Mum's bedroom.

Her Mum had gone upstairs an hour ago saying she needed a lie down.

That always alarmed Molly because by now she knew that meant that her Mum was having one of her headaches.

Molly knew they passed eventually but naturally she always felt great concern.

Molly looked on in the quiet, just making sure.

She saw her Mum on the bed. She was lying on her side with her back to the door, her hair pulled back into a loose pony tail. She appeared to be sleeping.

Molly watched and became slightly more relaxed once she saw the movement of breathing.

She had no reason to expect anything untoward to happen to her Mum, but she always felt she had a responsibility to check on her when she wasn't feeling quite right.

Something her Mum knew nothing of was Molly's nightly checks.

Molly hadn't slept too well since the shooting.

At first she had barely slept at all, worried that if she did she would miss a development of some kind.

Once her Mum had come home she did begin to sleep better, but even now she would wake up at random intervals. It was usually a different time each night, two in the morning, three in the morning and such, but she always woke up.

When she did wake, she would quietly get out of bed and creep along the landing, just as she was doing now.

She would gently push open the door to her Mum's bedroom and sneak in as quietly as she possibly could.

Once in, Molly would listen for breathing.

Once she heard it and was satisfied that everything was alright, she would sneak back out and go back to bed again, feeling safe in the knowledge that her Mum was alright.

Not once had Molly accidentally woken her Mum, and she had never told her that she did this each night.

One night she had creaked a floorboard rather loudly, but her Mum had merely stirred in her sleep and settled back down again moments later.

Molly hadn't been surprised as she knew her Mum had always been a deep sleeper and had, even before the shooting, had the occasional tendency to sleep through her alarm clock going off. Molly, on the other hand had always been an early bird.

A frequent morning joke had been that Molly had clearly inherited the traight of early rising from her Father, not her Mother.

Even Evan had commented that her Mum could "sleep through a nuclear war and not notice".

Atleast that was one thing she shooting had not changed.

Molly was always eager to help her Mum as well as she could these days, but she never quite fully understood what was going on.

She was certainly very bright for a twelve year old, but still too young too understand the deeper insand outs of what her Mother had experienced.

She helped as often as she could, loading the dish washer, hoovering etc, but a lot of the time she was at school or doing homework.

She knew her Mum had been shot, and she knew the bullet was still in her brain.

The Doctors had explained that some days that bullet would make her Mum feel unwell, while other days she would be fine.

She understood that this was why her Mum would sometimes drop things, or not be able to read the print in the newspaper.

Molly had cried herself to sleep on many nights because she felt so sad for her Mum.

She knew her Mum being hurt had changed things forever.

She knew that, because of being hurt, her Mum was no longer a 'Police lady'.

She had also been told that her Mum could have a fit and the Doctors had told her what to do should that happen when she and her Mum were alone in the house.

She had to make sure any obstructions were out of the way, dial 999 and then call Evan or - failing that - a neighbour.

Molly was thankfulthat this had, so far, never happened. Her Mum had pills to take each day which, she had been told, should prevent it.

But Molly wasn't stupid, and she could see the changes the shooting had caused in her Mother.

Gone were the hours of paperwork her Mum would be doing most evenings.

"Profiling" she had called it.

Gone also was the frequently used response of "Tell me later Moll's I'm a bit busy at the moment".

In a way, it was almost as if the shooting had given Molly her Mother back.

Molly looked down at the floor in guilt at that thought.

She wasn't pleased her Mum had been shot, certainly not, but it did mean that she now spent more time with her than ever before.

Molly had been inconsolable the day Evan, and the two Police officers who had knocked at the door, sat her down and explained what had happened.

Molly's memory of that day was shaky. She remembered bursting into tears as Evan had explained that something had happened, that her Mum had been "hurt by a very bad man" - probably the very bad man with the gun who had tried to hurt Molly herself earlier that very morning.

She remembered the dash to the hospital, through the London traffic, in Evan's car.

And the waiting, and waiting, and waiting.

Doctors had frequently come and gone, speaking to Evan mostly.

Molly had sat on a chair in the relatives' room with Evan, tapping her feet anxiously as the doctors came in and spoke quietly to Evan using terms such as "blood loss", "cranial trauma" and "critical but stable".

Each time a Doctor came in, Molly's heart skipped a beat, convinced that they were coming to deliver bad news.

The relief when they didn't was immense.

Much later on, Evan had been allowed to see her Mum, but only for a few minutes.

He had reported back that she was "sleeping" and that she might sleep for a long time while she fought to get better.

Eight weeks it had been in total, two months.

Molly had finally been allowed in to see her Mum a couple of days later after the Doctors had decided her condition was stable enough.

She had felt both relieved and uncomfortable.

Relieved because her Mum was alive and in the hands of people who could help her, but uncomfortable with this unfamiliar situation.

She had wanted to prod her Mum and urge her to wake up. She used to do this at home now and again when it got late and her Mum had nodded off sitting on the sofa with paperwork and a glass of red wine.

But in the hospital there had been no response to her prods and Molly had felt scared.

It wasn't normal, it was as if there was nobody in, like it wasn't her Mum at all.

Eventually her Mum had slowly woken up and, after some more time in the hospital she had finally been allowed home.

It had felt strange at first as the usual routine of Molly being taken to school by her Mum had disappeared.

Molly understood that her Mum was no longer allowed to drive because of the fits she might have, but it just didn't seem right.

Eventually Alex had sat Molly down in the living room one evening and talked with her at great length about what had happened and how they were going to get through it "no matter what Molls".

It had been a long and helpful Mother and daughter chat.

Alex had wanted everything out in the open, all worries, all fears and no secrets.

Molly had confessed about how upsetting it had been seeing her Mum lying unconscious in the hospital for all those weeks.

She had recalled how scared she became every single time the telephone had rung just incase it was the hospital with bad news.

Up until then, Molly had been through a lot but had hidden it well.

In turn, Alex had responded to Molly's questions and worries.

She had reassured her daughter that the shooting had actually not hurt because it had happened far too fast to register.

She had also admitted that she would probably never be back to normal but reminded Molly that they both had to be thankfulas most other people who had the misfortune to be shot in the head had either not survived, or had survived with terrible disabilities far worse than Alex's.

Molly had also run her fingers very gently, barely touching at all, over the bullets entry point.

It wasn't tremendously visible now but it was slightly noticeable, looking like a slight blemish and indentation above the left eye with a small amount of scarring.

Alex had asked Molly to touch it to prove to her daughter that it was nothing to be scared of. That it was no more harmful that the mole on Molly's own face.

Molly remembered what happened next.

She had burst into tears.

The chat with her Mum had allowed Molly to finally lower her guard and all her weeks worth of pent up worry and emotion had finally surfaced and overflowed.

She had tried so hard to hide it all, to be strong for her Mum, but now it was all out.

As Molly had cried her heart out, her Mum had pulled her close and hugged her lovingly, rubbing her shoulder warmly and reassuringly with her hand.

Even her Mum had cried. The pair of them had sat there, embraced on the sofa, finally letting it all out after having tried to be strong for each other for so long.

Molly had felt so much better after that long, long cry.

She felt as if a terrific weight had been lifted from her shoulders.

She remembered her Mum saying how immensely proud she was of Molly and how much Molly had helped her to stay strong and to fight her way back to health.

When Molly had finally let it all out and dried her eyes, she had helped her Mum make the tea.

Nothing special, just a simple snack of beans on toast, but it was so much like the old days before the shooting.

They had laughed and joked in the kitchen as they worked, Molly making a bet that her Mum would burn the toast...and she did!

Molly was now satisfied with the result of her latest check up on her Mum.

She pulled the door shut again and slowly began to creep back down the stairs.

She hoped her Mum would feel better soon as Evan would be arriving in a short while.

It was Wednesday and that was hospital check up day.

As she had no school today Molly would be coming along too.

Molly liked Evan.

Admittedly he was 'uncool' but he made her laugh a lot by pretending to understand things Molly talked about such as pop music, TV soaps and her friends.

Plus he was also around a lot more than her own Dad.

Molly's Dad had finally telephoned a few weeks ago after eventually getting a message in Canada that he needed to phone Evan urgently because something had happened to her Mum.

Evan had spoken to him for quite some time.

Apparently he had initially been quite concerned, but once it became clear that her Mum was going to recover, his concern died away.

He had called back just once since then, the usual excuse, he had been very busy.

Even with all that had happened her Dad had still never found the time to write a letter, to send her Mum a 'Get Well' card or even bother with anything so simple as an e-mail.

But that didn't matter because there was Evan.

* * *

Molly's latest check had succeeded in not waking Alex from her respite.

Peacefully she slept in the quiet bedroom as her precious daughter made her way silently back down the stairs.

Inside however, Alex's mind was busy in a state of dreaming.

Where ever she was it was dark, pitch black with no light at all. Silence and a cold chill surrounded her where she lay.

She was unsure as to where she was as this most certainly didn't feel like she was lying on her warm bed.

This surface was ice cold on her back, cold and metallic.

Alex tried to move to investigate her surroundings but soon found that she couldn't.

Her body refused to cooperate as she tried once again to move, a muscle, a limb, anything at all.

She blinked several times. Was she blind or simply in total darkness?

Nothingness continued, failing to answer her question.

Suddenly an extremely bright light blinked on from an unknown source above her.

It shone down brightly upon her, round like a spot light, bathing her in bright white light yet still leaving the rest of the room in total darkness.

And that was when, to her sheer horror, Alex realised where she was.

Her eyes widened fearfully as she realised she was lying on a mortuary slab.

It was just like the one she had momentarily envisioned herself lying on back in 1981 when she had been investigating Simon Neary with CID.

She was covered to just below her shoulders by a white sheet.

Alex felt panic begin to build within her where she lay.

She tried once again to move and again found no success.

It was is if her body was..."Dead?", Alex thought in a whisper.

"We are _still_ waiting for you Alex".

She stopped.

Listened.

That voice.

Footsteps.

Definitely footsteps.

Slow but steady footsteps could be heard approaching from outside the circle of light that surrounded her.

"..._Still_ waiting for you".

"No...", Alex muttered in dread, sounding both fearful and full of sorrow as she recognised the voice.

Her guess had been correct and a moment later the sinisterform of the Bowie Clown slowly stepped into the light, heading towards Alex, step...by step...by step...

Menacingly,the Clown hunched forwards slightly, starring down at Alex as he neared the slab.

His eyes were ice cold as he stared, never blinking, into Alex's eyes.

"You will join us", he stated with no emotion to his voice at all, "You are late and Daddy is waiting".

"Please just leave me alone", Alex begged, "I need to put this behind me".

Alex was a strong woman indeed but, at this moment, she desperately wanted to run away from the inhuman monster her Father Tim had become since killing himself and her Mother in the 1981 car bomb.

"No Alexandra", the Clown said lowering his face close to Alex's and speaking in a whisper, "You will do as you are told...you both will, the whole family will be together as was always destined".

"Both?", Alex questioned fearfully, still trying to move.

"Yes...both"...

The Clown stood up to his full height and outstretched an arm to Alex's right.

Suddenly, almost magically, Alex could move her head and looked to the right where the Clown was indicating.

Another light came on, revealing a similar scene of a slab on which another form covered by a white sheet lay unmoving.

Alex didn't understand.

Why was this relevant? What was he up to?

The Clown laughed and stroked Alex's face gently, causing a chill of revulsion to run down Alex's spine.

The Clown turned and began to walk slowly towards the other slab, just feet away, also bathed in light.

He stood next to the still form and took hold of the sheet that covered the head.

The menacing eyes looked up once again and locked themselves into eye contact with Alex as she lay paralysed on her own slab.

"I am also waiting"...The Clown began with determination in his chilling voice, "...for my Grand daughter!".

He pulled the sheet back to reveal the forms face.

"MOLLY!!", Alex screamed, "No, don't you dare! Please! Just take me if you want but leave Molly! She's only a child!".

"As were you!", her Father boomed before looking down at the non moving form of Molly.

"Why are you doing this?!", Alex demanded, her voice cracking up with emotion and terror.

"This family _will_ be together Alex", her father the Clown promised, "We _will_ be happy together. We _will_ sing our song for ever and ever".

The Clown once again approached Alex and the light in which she was surrounded.

He snapped his fingers and the second spotlight, along with Molly, vanished.

"Don't bring my daughter in to this!", Alex desperately pleaded, her eyes making contact with the Clown's own as if searching for one last shred of Humanity.

The Clown stood tall next to Alex and smiled in an almost fatherly way but with a hint of malice to the expression.

"Shush, shush Alex...", he said in a hushed voice.

It was suddenly reminiscent of how he would speak to calm her at times when she might have grazed a knee as a child.

Warm, yet in this instance, also terrifying.

"Everything will be alright", the Clown promised and gently ran the tips of his fingers over Alex's forehead.

His fingers paid particular attention to the bullet wound.

From the sensation of touch Alex realised that, right here and now, the bullet wound was not healed.

It was fresh, as if it had only recently occurred.

"Please...", Alex desperately tried a new tactic, "...spare my daughter...and at least tell me why you are doing this".

The Clown stroked the bullet wound a little harder, causing Alex to wince.

"You _will_ die Alex", the Clown demanded, "and you _will_ bring with you your daughter".

"Never!", Alex stated, defiance in her voice.

The touch became harder on the wound again.

"You will do as you are told young lady!" the Clown countered in a parental tone.

Alex was scared. More than scared, petrified, more so now that her daughter had been brought into this.

There was no way Alex would allow any harm to come to Molly.

It was a Mothers job and duty to protect her child no matter the cost, and Alex had no hesitation in accepting that responsibility.

Alex attempted to stifle a cry as the Clown began to press a finger slightly into the bullet hole.

She knew she wasn't dead, but she wasn't exactly alive here either.

She knew this had to be a hallucination, but felt it was also a warning, a chilling warning.

The Clown pressed his finger a little further in once again and slowly withdrew it, his finger tip glistening with blood and fluid.

Alex breathed hard, her eyes welling up at the pain the Clown had caused.

"That was a warning", the Clown stated with zero emotion, "Now go, I want to meet my granddaughter!!".

"No!!", Alex shouted in defiance...

* * *

She gasped and woke with a sudden start.

The room was light, the curtains open and the mid morning sun was pouring in.

Alex slowly moved herself into a sitting position on her bed, hugging her knees close to her chest as her heart beat fast within her.

She took a deep breath and, after a moment, exhaled.

Slowly she began to calm herself, adrenalin causing her to tremble slightly.

"I must be cracking up", she reluctantly muttered as she lowered her head against her hugged knees and closed her eyes.

Alex took another deep breath and opened her eyes again.

She felt extremely unsettled by her dream.

She hoped it was a dream at least, but Alex could never now be sure of where the fine line between fantasy and reality was.

Alex shivered. That wasn't a dream. That had been a nightmare at the very least.

'But what if it was a warning?', Alex wondered and turned her head slightly to see a small framed photograph of Molly by her bedside.

It was an old photograph. Molly as a toddler, sat on the floor in a pink dress holding a cuddly bear Evan had given her or her first birthday.

She still had the bear. It was looking a little aged these days but it always sat in pride of place on the pillow of Molly's bed, despite it having lost an eye at some point over the years.

Despite trying, Alex couldn't bury her feeling of dread that this may have been a genuine warning from the Clown, her Father.

'But he only ever appeared to me in 1981', Alex considered, 'or can he follow me to the here and now too?'

Alex shook her head.

She was being silly.

1981 wasn't real. It couldn't be real, despite how much she longed for certain parts of it, certain people from it, to be real.

Not one person who had responded to her writings on both her and D.C.I Tyler's experiences had ever encountered a single person who had experienced anything even remotely similar.

But the Clown had to be real in some unfathomable way.

He was her Father, he was Tim Price, and he had killed both himself and her Mother in the car bomb in 1981.

Yet despite learning the truth regarding her parents' deaths in her supposedly fictional 1981 experience, she had eventually prised the very same truth from Evan in 2008.

How could that be if 1981 had all been imaginary?

The line of what was real and what was not was blurring more and more as time went on.

'I really must be losing it', Alex admitted.

But Molly...

Alex bit her lip.

She wondered what on Earth she should do.

"Is it a warning?", Alex whispered, "an omen?".

She couldn't refuse to let Molly out of her sight ever again on the off chance that her dream might be proved right, yet she wanted to hold her daughter and never let go to prevent the Clown from taking her.

A thought then hit Alex and her eyes widened in fear.

"What if something is _supposed_ to happen to Molly?" she gasped, "Is that why she kept appearing to me in 1981? Does something happen to her too?"

Alex wouldn't let it.

No matter what it took, Alex was not going to let any harm come to her daughter.

Her Father would not be permitted to wreck her family twice over.

She moved to the side of her bed and got to her feet just as there was a knock at the door.

"Muuuuuuuuum!!", came the call from Molly as she answered the door downstairs, "It's Evaaaaannnn!".

"Coming Sweetheart!" Alex called back as she had to force her dark thoughts aside to focus on the matters at hand.

It was hospital check up day.

Evan had arrived to drive her there so Alex could be told yet again by the specialist that her brain didn't work properly anymore, something she was all too aware of on a daily basis.

She would make a point of mentioning that her headaches were worsening too.

She was hopeful that something simple could be done with her medication to prevent them worsening any further.

Yet she was concerned that it might be something else, maybe the bullet had caused some undetected damage, or perhaps a damaged part of her brain was beginningto deteriorate?

Alex sighed and pulled herself together.

She had to stop dwelling on negative thoughts but, try as she might, she simply couldn't help it.

If anything happened to her then Molly would be, with the exception of Evan, alone just as she herself had been.

That thought terrified Alex. It would be like betraying her only daughter.

"Morning Alex!"a voice called from the bottom of the stairs.

It was Evan, cheerfulas ever.

"I'll just be a moment", Alex reassured him as she called back, checking her hair in the mirror of her dressing table.

She decided she did look presentable enough wearing a pair of dark blue jeans like her 1981 pair, and a casual white blouse.

Alex spent a few more moments tidying her hair up and once again tied it back with a band.

"Ready", she announced to herself before heading out of her bedroom door, picking up a small bag of belongings so she could change at the hospital in preparation for her scan.

As soon as Alex reached the bottom of the stairs, Evan embraced her in a friendly hug.

"How are you feeling today Alex?", he enquired?

Alex smiled as they separated, "Quite good actually. No headaches, well bad ones at least, for a couple of days".

Evan nodded with a smile, "That's good to hear".

Alex looked at Evan. He looked very tired today.

"Are you alright?" she enquired, "you look rather exhausted...what ever have you been up to Mister White?".

She tried to hide the smirk but failed.

Evan smiled with a chuckle.

"Sadly, Alex, it's not what you're insinuating", he shook his head, "No I haven't been wining and dining the ladies of London. My damned car alarm kept going off last night".

"Someone trying to break into your car?" Alex questioned, concern in her voice.

"I don't think so", Evan reassured her with a hand on her shoulder, "I looked out the window each time and I couldn't see anyone. Must be a glitch. I'll get it looked at later".

"Sounds like a good idea", Alex nodded, "can't have you looking like that every day".

Evan laughed and took Alex's bag from her.

"Come on", he indicated to the door, "let's get you to the hospital".

"Thanks", Alex nodded and turned towards the living room, "Molly, we're off now, you'd better hurry up!"

A couple of moments passed and Molly came dashing out of the living room.

She swiftly jogged towards the front door and threw her arms around Evan's waist, forcing the lawyer backwards a couple of steps.

"Easy, Scrap", Evan laughed as he patted the young girl on the head.

"Can we go shopping afterwards Evan?" Molly jumped up and down smiling.

"That depends how your Mum is feeling Molly", Evan looked to Alex who was smiling at the pair of them.

"I don't see why not", Alex agreed, "but I'll buy lunch, as Evan has been kind enough to drive us".

"Sounds like we have a deal, Scrap", Evan patted Molly on the shoulder.

"Yay, Evan!", Molly cheered, and Alex laughed. Those two made a formidable team sometimes.

"Right, shall we go then?" Evan asked.

In response, Alex and Molly made theirway to the door hand in hand.

Molly had now moved from Evan to her Mother and placed her arm tightly around Alex's waist as they walked out onto the street and stopped by Evans car, a silver Mercedes.

Evan shut the house door behind him and made his way to his car.

He unlocked it with a press of his keyfob and the hazard lights blinked in confirmation.

In a gentlemanly manner, he opened a rear passenger door to allow Molly to climb into the back and then shut the door behind her.

Moments later he did the same for Alex, opening the front passenger door for Alex to get in.

"Why thank you kind sir", Alex mocked in a friendly manner.

Evan shut the door behind Alex and made to put her bag in the boot before he himself got into the drivers seat and moved to start the ignition.

"Damn...", Alex cursed.

"Everything alright?", Evan turned to Alex and asked.

"I forgot my headache pills", she admitted.

"It's alright", Evan nodded helpfully, "I'll get them for you, just wait here you two".

"Thanks Evan", Alex replied sounding a little embarrassed, "on the coffee table".

With that, Evan got out of the car and used his spare key to get back into the house.

"Can we have some music Mum?", Molly asked as they waited for Evan to return.

"You'll have to ask Evan in a minute", Alex answered, not wanting to fiddle with Evan's complicated looking car stereo herself, "he won't be long".

Alex's attention was then taken by a beep in her pocket.

She reached into it and retrieved her mobile phone which was displaying an envelope on the screen, a text message had been received.

It was from an unknown number. She didn't recognise it at all.

Curious, Alex opened the message.

"I'm Happy...Hope you're Happy too".

Alex froze and she felt a wave of terror run through her entire body as those chilling words haunted her yet again..

As she looked up, she saw a man with dark long-ish hair at the very end of the street.

He put on a pair of dark sunglasses and raised a hand in an almost mocking wave.

"Molly get out of the car now!!", Alex shouted as she reached to undo her own seatbelt.

It was too late.

* * *

Alex felt the burning heat only momentarily.

She saw the intense fireball but it was, again, only momentarily_._

There was no time to react or to even scream as the Mercedes exploded into a furious fireball, the combination of explosives and petrol causing a tremendous blast.

The force of the explosion triggered nearby car alarms and shattered house windows.

Burning wreckage clattered onto the road and pavement as the pieces crashed back to the ground.

In the moments the explosion took to occur, Alex had been distinctly aware of one thing...her Father the Clown beckoning her towards them, arms outstretched.

Real time appeared to slow as the explosion engulfed both Alex and her daughter with its singeing heat.

The two realities appeared to merge, like one scene fading into another.

The 'real' world began to fade out and Alex's vision of the Clown became more defined.

Tim Price held his hands out, as if desperately trying to pull Alex and Molly from the blast and into his world, ice cold eyes and a piercing grin.

"We are waiting for you".

A second voice cut in, softer, gentler, a female voice...

"We would always wait for you Alex".

Caroline Price became visible to the left of the Clown.

She was bent down with both arms outstretched; her face filled with tears of joy as she reached forward and took hold of her Grand daughter Molly.

"Alex", Caroline managed to say from the tears and then looked to the child proudly, "...and Molly".

"Our Grandchild", Tim said with an internal struggle sounding in his voice, "Our little Alex's daughter".

Alex felt herself nearing the Clown.

Her Mother held Molly tight, embraced in a loving hug.

The Clown outstretched his arms yet again in Alex's direction, flames filling this nowhere place they were all in.

"Please...", the Clown urged.

Alex didn't know why, but she followed her instinct_,_ possibly reassured by the presence of Caroline.

She held out her own arms and embraced the Clown.

He held her tight and she rested her head on his shoulder, feeling suddenly exhausted.

"I forgive you", she whispered in his ear.

As she said that, the Clown began to feel warm once again.

She felt the Clown costume begin to dissolve and the flames surrounding them die away.

Alex took one step back and looked at the form before her.

The Clown was gone, all trace of him, gone.

Now stood before her was simply Timothy Price, her Father, dressed in his usual patterned jumper, glasses etc.

"It was forgiveness he was waiting for", Caroline spoke holding Molly's hand, "And now we can finally move on, all of us. There is no going back Alex, you must let go".

Alex felt her own tears slowly beginning to make their way down her cheeks.

In a split second she had lost everything again, and regained everything lost before.

Both her parents embraced her as she cried tears of both sadness and joy, her forehead showing no sign of injury at all.

Molly too was taken into the embrace.

She was safe. They both were.

"Come with us", Tim urged, holding his daughter after such a long time.

"We can finally all move on", Caroline promised, "together...".

* * *

From where he stood at the end of the street, Arthur Layton observed the scene of sheer carnage unfolding before him.

At the moment of his choosinghe had activated the remote detonator.

It had been a simple device, yet more sophisticated than the one he used in 1981 when he had taken out the first half of the Price family.

Explosives had been rigged underneath the car during the night and a mobile phone attached to the bomb.

He had almost got caught during the setting of the device as he hadn't anticipated how sensitive the Mercedes alarm would be.

To trigger the device, all Layton had done was the ring the mobile.

But he hadn't been able to help himself.

It had been relatively easy to discover the contact details of Alex Drake, including her mobile number.

He just hadn't been able to resist sending her that one taunting text moments before he detonated the bomb.

Layton signed and took a packet of cigarettes from his pocket.

He took one out, placed it between his lips and casually lit it with a lighter from the other pocket.

He took in a large breath and savoured the nicotine before exhaling.

Layton was relieved.

He had been left with no option but eliminate Alex Drake.

There was something very unusual about that woman, something very wrong about her.

Layton had taken an awful lot of drugs over the years, and was still taking an awful lot of drugs when he could get them, but he knew full well he was perfectly sane.

So why was he so utterly convinced that this D.I Alex Drake was the same annoying bitch he had encountered in his younger days, back in 1981?

People often did look alike, he had admitted.

And people often did share the same names.

Yes the same name, the same physical appearance, even the same job? Taunting him in 1981 about how she would see him again in 2008?

But once she had published that book which had then become a television show, about how she had experienced some kind of life in 1981...That had simply been too much for Arthur Layton.

He took another drag of the cigarette and thought as he watched the car burn.

She had named him as the man who had shot her and the Police were now actively seeking his arrest.

Whatever had happened, Layton simply knew he had met her in 1981.

**H**e had no idea why or how, but he felt sure she was somehow the same person.

And as such she was a danger to him. A danger to him then and a danger to him now.

Alex Drake was a risk Arthur Layton could not afford to take, and as a result, she had to be eliminated.

Layton breathed out some more smoke.

He watched from the distance and observed Evan run from the house. Onlookers were beginningto gather, pulling up in their cars and stepping out oftheir houses.

He watched the lawyer with interest. He remembered the young Evan White representing him in 1981.

The lawyer was now in the street before his eyes.

He was shouting, shrieking towards the burning wreck of the Mercedes and two neighbours were having to physically hold him back.

Layton took one last drag of the cigarette and threw the butt on the pavement.

The death of the child, Alex's daughter, had been unfortunate but Layton wasn't overly bothered.

He turned and began to stroll away as the faint sound of sirens approaching began to come nearer. It was time to go.

"Shit 'appens", he shrugged.

-THE END-

* * *


End file.
